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The first sign of madness...
They say the first sign of madness is repeating the same thing over and over, yet expecting different results. That would have made both Gibo and myself certifiably mad on Saturday morning. We had got amongst no less than three stags, all to have them shut up on us or wind us. While there was no shortage of action, we felt it was still early and the stags weren’t really going for it. Then we bumped into ‘Rowdy”. Rowdy was roaring his his mud-covered balls off in the head of a gully just before midday. He was replying heartily to our roars, and we formulated a plan to head him off at the top, keeping downwind of him. Within 100 metres of his estimated position he stopped roaring. We arrived at the top of the ridge where a nice little pad was found, but no stag, no noise, no fresh sign. Twenty minutes of sitting and listening and lo and behold, Rowdy opens up again, this time at the top of the other side of the watershed. The Dynamic Duo scuttle down the side of the ridge, through the roughest kind of creek, and end up on a knoll. Again, Rowdy keeps his distance. We sit and wait, and a yearling spiker comes into check out or moans. Circling us with little “bluh” spiker calls. Big future that little guy, not even a year old and rarking up the big boys!
We sat there in the midday sun nearly dozing off, thinking it over. If what you are doing isn’t working, stop doing it! Clearly our roars were pushing him off. A new approach was implemented. When he roars, we are going to close the gap as quickly as possible, and ninja up on him in the final distance, not roaring at all. We dropped back down into the shitty creek, and attempted to get back out the other side. I swear in the 1980’s Gibo was actually Sonic the Hedgehog, time and time again I watching him curl up in a ball and blast underneath blackberry and bush lawyer I could only dream of fitting under. Reaching the top of the next ridge, we hit some nice open country with good visibility, and we stealthed along for half an hour or so, following the source of the roaring.
The noise took us up into the head of the next watershed. Right in to a filthy, muddy stag den, with a massive wallow, thrashed saplings, and fresh sign everywhere. We cut around the head of the gut, and back into the wind on the other side. Gibo was up front, with myself the tail gunner. As he reached around the other side of a small knoll, I watched a hind watching Gibo from 15 metres. Where there’s girls there’s boys! Being a good girl she didn’t bark at us and we moved on after she ducked off the ridge. Suddenly Rowdy lets rip! He is still on the side we have just left, we have over shot him but possibly placed ourselves in a better position to shoot him. Just then, I see the hind leaving up the other side of the watershed. I softly whistle at Gibo to stop, and he looks back as a second hind follows the first.
Low and behold, with a shove of the hind, another stag appears, moving his girls along the track. I quickly look at his tops, he has three on top which is the rule around here, and I drop him with a standing lung shot. Gibo directs me to the site of his crash landing at the bottom of a swampy gut, and the rest is history. A small 12, certainly not my biggest stag to date but still a 12, and easily the most symmetrical, and very much the prettiest. A bone out job and a long trip back to camp for a Waikato or two. Two pleased but tired hunters.
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It’s funny, before I left that morning I had asked the ‘game gods’ for two stags. Gibo just laughed but when we got back that night I asked for the second one. Gibo laughed again and said he would be happy with anything, to which I replied “no, bigger than mine!” How right I was!
I will let Gibo tell day two, To be continued…
The first sign of madness...
We'll done boys! Impressive.
