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Annual Sika hunting pilgrimage
Its tipping down again at base camp…..so much for the El Nino ‘hotter and dryer than normal’ propaganda thrown at us in October. So I thought I’d write up our hunting trip to date:
The Nissan Patrol and box trailer had just enough spare room to throw perhaps a couple of sacks of spuds into, and no more. It felt far more like moving house than heading bush for a few weeks hunting Sika.
@HuntBeta had arrived at the base camp location early, and had already set up the kitchen, fridge, shower with running hot water, solar electrical system, 12 and 230v supply, internet connection and his private digs. All I could add was a dirty big green tent in case the run of beautiful weather came to an end (it did), or we had visitors...
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After a lifetime of doing things tough, sometimes you just need to take some creature comforts along to make life more enjoyable. As the saying goes; anyone can be uncomfortable.
A wander around the local environs of base camp showed plenty of evidence of Sika, and not much of human interference. All good. As one week turned into two, we became acquainted with a small handful of Sika that hung around up on the steep rocky terrain above camp, and didn’t seem too put off with our presence.
After settling into the camp routine for a couple of days we set off for distant valleys, knowing the Sika will possibly not have seen hunters since we were there last year. And every year the ride gets more challenging, as the body lets us know we’re not 40 any more. So skill takes a front seat, especially on the return ride where we often have to juggle 20kg pack and slung rifle up some 30 degree slopes, cross swamps and negotiate some incredibly lumpy and washed out tracks with a couple of sika onboard.
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Ensconced in a spacious fly camp beneath some shade providing beech we waited for the heat of the day to subside. By 7 O’clock we judged it cool enough venture out. Sidling away from camp, with the wind in our favour it wasn’t long till we spied animals. First one, then two, then three. Two stags and a hind all feeding together half way up a hillside at 1200 metres altitude.
Our motto of over 20 years has been: If we have gone more than 600m from camp and haven’t found deer, we are doing something wrong. We had spied these three at about the 400m mark, so all was well in the world. Now to get them on the deck.
The valley was quite steep both sides, so it took a fair bit of faffing about to find a small terrace to shoot from. Even with the bipod on full extension @HuntBeta was in a fairly cramped shooting position. Too cramped as it turned out, with the scope claiming its own victim during the melee.
I whispered out the ranges. # 1 was at 325m, the .308 spoke, #2 at 340m, another muffled wooompf. # 3 moved out to 365m till he did a red stag impression and stopped and looked back. Wooompf. #3 on the deck.
Elation was quickly overtaken by the knowledge that we had to get over there and find them on a featureless waist high tussock and dracopyllum covered ridge before dark. Fortunately, #1 was found quickly but it took another 90 minutes of quartering acres of countryside to find #3……25m from #1.
Running out of light, #3 was gutted and hung open over a decent sized dracophyllum bush, to be picked up on the two wheeler early the next morning. And boy, the next morning’s butchery revealed about the fattest, most well grown 4 point Sika we had seen in many a year. A far cry from the numerous handbag sized Sika we usually bump into.
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The trip out was uneventful. Which is a good thing. As eventful trips involve being stuck with 100kg of 2 wheeler on top of your bad leg, pack and slung rifle pushing your neck out of joint and an exhaust pipe doing a Kwai Chang Caine impression on one of your limbs. (you need to be over 55 to understand this reference)
The second night back at base camp saw the wind in our favour for a near-by hunt. After sitting in the lee of a handy mountain Toatoa for an hour the animals started showing themselves. Our trouble being they were venturing out from cover way out at 500-700m, with the terrain offering very little opportunity for us to close the gap. We felt our way back to camp in the darkness, with head torches on red held low by our sides to reduce our impact on the local inhabitants.
We had a problem: animals showing up regularly but with too much distance between us and them for guys who seldom shoot beyond 300m.
What to do? We needed an immediate solution: practising at long range shooting will be on the cards for 2024, but right now we needed someone comfortable at reaching out and touching deer a long way away.
Someone we knew would enjoy a break from the workshop was @Ross Nolan . The next day we guided him to our location. Over a brew and some of @HuntBeta’s bread making we explained the situation in detail to Ross. He was happy to let us know he had it all sorted. He had just finished putting the third barrel on his favourite action, and had put two shots through it at 200m, and, according to him, the rest was just maths.
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The next evening’s wind was just as obliging as the previous couple, so we slowly made our way along our favourite ridge, stopping often to scan for animals. Sure enough, around 8pm animals started materialising at most points of the compass. “There’s one waay over there” @HuntBeta remarks. Ross lasers it at 670m, and opens his bino pouch stuffed full of ‘accoutrements’. Out come the accoutrements, wind and range are checked and into the phone go distance, angle, wind speed, rotation of the earth, Ross’s favourite colour etc etc. Then comes the task of steadying the rifle to shoot over 1m of scrub. Crossed shooting sticks materialise just as @HuntBeta whispers “there’s another one over there, and its only 500ish m away.
We redeploy in the new direction, just as target #1 feeds out of sight and we begin the process again.
“If that one is no good, another one has just come out of the scrub behind us at about 450m” announces @HuntBeta. Looking back at target #2 we see he’s on a mission, and is climbing steadily away from us, stopping only for a few seconds to sample some tasty morsel, and continue quickly upward. Target #3 feeds back into the scrub.
Bugger.
“Looks like we have another one up on that steep face” I announce. On queue it feeds into a tight gut and disappears out of sight. We scramble to wash off 200m of distance before it feeds back up the other side of the gut and back into sight. Out come the shooting sticks again and we await the outcome of Ross’s maths. Boooom! Goes the unsuppressed rifle (who shoots without a suppressor these days?) and before the sound of the hit has echoed back down the hill the animal drops like a sack of spuds.
”Well, who shoots it goes and gets it” we chime.
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By the time the deer is reached, darkness has fallen, the evening catabatic winds have picked up and we rue leaving the radios behind as we alternate between shouting directions and waving torch beams around the tussock in a supposed pre agreed code. “Could you hear us OK?” we enquired once he had returned from his rock climbing expedition. “yeah, perfectly. You were saying ‘ whmmmf occer eeey offfin weee”.
“OK. Next time we will remember the radios”. A brew is boiled and we yarn away till the mattress beckons some time later.
We are awoken at some ungodly time in the morning to what sounds like a possum getting stuck into the carcass hanging under the Beech. It’s Ross, breaking down the deer “The blowies were up half an hour ago so I had to get in before they got stuck in and ruined any meat”.
Once all the meat is safe inside pillow cases we tempt Ross back inside the big green tent with brewed coffee and cream.
But our run of perfect weather begins to evaporate. The forecast of 5 more fine days changed in the 8 hours we were asleep to now include rain and strong winds. The unexpected rain even had our tame mob of deer retreat off the mountainside to the shelter of our cosy basin, and a couple of hours after dark we had our sleep broken by three different Sika peeping and squeaking to each other for 30 minutes about the smelly inhabitants residing on the best grass in the local area.
Although we can get by with a bit of rain, the 25 to 35 knots gusts up on the tops were going to make staying upright on the 2 wheelers a fair bit of a challenge, so with the weather requiring us to wear thermals and a jacket around camp, we made the decision to pull up stumps early and head back to lower altitudes.
Breaking camp took about 3 hours. A whole lot quicker than setting up camp. But there’s going to be a fair bit of tent and gear drying out required once this spell of shit weather buggers off. We will have had over 120mls of rain over the last 48 hours here in Taupo.
Funnily enough the weather did this to us last Xmas…..and the Xmas before.
Perhaps its trying to tell us something.
