The Title is meant to be Last Gasp Effort.
Yesterday I jumped into the ute and drove North determined to get one roar hunt in before the curtain comes down.
I was lucky with the weather and it was still and overcast.
I camped out and at about 4pm I spotted 3 Fallow (I think a doe, yearling and fawn) so I watched them for an hour thinking that eventually a buck would come and check them out, and one did, but he was pretty ordinary.
So I moved on and at about 7pm I heard a moan down in a big scrubby gully (the first I had heard) so I sneaked in to have a look. He shut up and wouldn't answer a roar so I carefully stalked into where I thought he was. At about 70 yards I spooked him and he bolted but I had time to get a shot into behind his shoulder. There was crashing down the face he was on and then silence. I waited for 5 mins and than Tilly and I tracked in which wasn't hard because we found a good blood trail and lumps of fat on the forrest floor. I use the 20" 300saum and 168 Nosler during the roar and they are great big hole medicine. He was a really nice shaped 9 pointer with a bit of age on him. After butchering him I hung his HQs and shoulder in tree and carried the head and back steaks with me.
On the way back to camp I was flashing my torch around and saw 5 deer before I decided enough was enough and lay down and shot one at about 75 yards. It turned out to be a real yummy. What I had in mind was that I would drop meat off on the way home to anyone who wanted it for over the next month (I got my wife to ring ahead) so a couple extra deer were going to be handy.
At midnight I was serenaded by 2 stags quite close to my tent but they shut up after an hour and that was all of the roaring I heard.
This morning I was up early and all I saw was a single hind by herself and a hind and fawn. The single hind (she turned out to be dry) copped it at 200 yards with a neck shot. More meat. Her coat looked like she had suffered a knock back at some tome - maybe her fawn had been shot.
The rest of the morning was spent retrieving the stag and carrying the hind back to camp. I had taken a quad in and it was rather loaded up for the trip homePoor old Tilly looks a bit bedraggled because when I was butchering the stag it rolled down the steep slope through the scrub and skittled her. It jazzed up her saw hip, but she will be ok.
By the time I got home from the 2.5 hour drive at 4pm today I had given away 3 legs and 2 back steaks to people who appreciated the meat for the enforced stay-home ahead. One was a forum member. The rest is in my fridge and my wife has committed that to half of our street.![]()
So that was it. Now to hunker down, avoid bugs, and hopefully emerge eventually to a safer NZ and more hunting.
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