2 Attachment(s)
first sika trip and 3/8 th of a trophy
intitiaz and myself have just been on a 3 day fly in trip into heli sika oamaru private hut to chase sika for the first time. we landed, unpacked our kit, had a quick lunch and we were off to explore our block. we headed down to where i thought would be a good place to start our hunt. about 10 mins from the hut we come across a good clearing and because it was the middle of the day and the weather wasnt the best i wasnt expecting to see too much out and about but as we casually walked into the clearing i caught a glimpse of a white arse bounding towards the scrub, holey shit theres a deer! we quickly moved to try catch up with it as it made its way through the scrub into the bush. we ended up in another clearing hoping we would see the deer somewhere near by, shit there it is! no wait theres another! and another! 3 8 pointer sika stags made their way across the clearing pausing just for a moment to look at us before entering the thick scrub again, the first 2 got away clean, but the last paused and looked back at us just long enough for a shot, but due to there being lots of scrubby bushes all that was visible of the stag was his head above it. feeling i could pull a shot off i took my chance and fired, only to end up shooting off one of his antlers..... dam i shot high, the only time regret having my rifle sighted for 200yards. he stumbled away before either of us could get another shot at him. we tried to follow them into the scrub but lost them after it got too thick to walk through. all this exitement and we had barely been in the block for an hour! we spent the rest of the day exploring the block and looking for likely possies for that evening and the next day.
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the 2nd day dawned, we were up at a sparrows fart and decided to head different ways to cover more ground. i headed to the far end of the block, stalking each clearing and terrace along the way but to my surprise no deer were seen that morning. looking around some more it seemed there was bugger all for the deer to eat unless they really like moss and tussock grass. we rested during the middle of the day then for the evening we decided to head to where we saw the 3 stags the day before. after watching a few clearings for a couple of hours we finally spotted a nice stag making his way across a bare patch way up in some scrub about 400 yards away. we moved to a possie that wouldve given us a good shot at him but he wasnt seen again. as daylight was starting to fade we decided to head to another spot we thought would be good while we waited for dark. we spotted a hind feeding 530 yards away and decided we would see if we could get her. calcs were made, scope dialled, booom. miss. we watched as the hind and 4 other deer we hadnt seen ran for cover. what went wrong? 530 yards isnt that hard of a shot i had done it many times before?? what i realised shortly after is i didnt account for the 18 inches of cross wind drift. another bloody amateur mistake that cost another sika. oh well shit happens.
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on our last day we were up early again, the day wasnt looking very nice with heavy rain and wind. we headed to another good looking spot in hopes we could bag something before our pickup later that morning. after sitting in the rain for 2 hours we decided to pull the pin and head back to camp and clean up while waiting for our ride. even though we didnt manage to bag an animal we were still happy with our trip, we had explored some awesome bush, we had seen a few deer, had a shot at a couple, and even managed to score an antler with 3 points still on it, we thought 3 out of 8 still wasnt too bad for our first sika trip. next time well be on the money.
