Last hunt with a good mate till September.....

Well one of my very good mates is a dairy farmer and he's now flat out calving so wont have any time off till September......I know it's only a month but we hunt together a fair bit and just get on well so I'll be missing my dose of man therapy.
Today was our last chance at a hunt till after calving starts to settle down.
Originally we were just going to do a day trip but we decided to make it an overnighter and made our way up to camp last night very late.....about 1am by the time we crawled into our fart sacks.
Alarms set for 6:30am came around much to fast, snooze button abused several times as it was still too dark to get up and start glassing.

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Finally crawled out of the scratcher about 8am checked my mates tent and oddly he was gone but his rifle was still there......
A bit odd so I waited and called out quietly in case he was shitting behind a bush somewhere :D
Finally I spied him.a few hundred yards away just as he crested a ridge towards where we planned on spending the morning glassing.
I thought to myself "with no rifle what's he gonna do shoot them with his cock ?"
Anyway I put my boots on grabbed my rifle, binos, jet cooker, coffee sachet and some water and set off after him double time.
I caught up to him and queried him on his current predicament of being at our glassing point but un armed.
He said that I was sleeping so soundly he assumed I had already gone up ahead so didn't bring his rifle as mine was more than enough.
Anyway I set about making coffee whilst my mate got to work glassing.
Well soon enough he pipes up "got one but you better not piss about it's a 2 stepper" (a 2 stepper is a deer that is in the scrub and could disappear in 2 steps). Dunno if anyone else calls em that ?
Anyway I said can you range it and I'll dial up and smoke it ? "Bugger I lost it" he replies.
We sat there and continued glassing as we knew that the deer/s would likely feed out into the open if we didn't spook it.
Sure enough as I'm enjoying the mornings brew he pipes up "I've got it again and another one".
Quickly I got him to talk me onto them so I could keep an eye on them whilst he ranged them.
They looked a reasonable distance away across a valley and my mate confirmed 369 yards, I quickly plugged the numbers into my ballistics calc and dialed up the solution.
Once dialed up it took me a minute to find them again but once on target I confirmed I was ready to shoot and asked my mate to spot the shot.
He confirmed he was ready and described what the deer was doing.....unbeknownst to us both deer must have been doing the same thing quartering away looking back over its shoulder :D
I took the shot and was able to actually watch the shot hit and sack the red on the spot....just as well as my mate calls out "it hadn't gone down and shoot it again" well I was somewhat perplexed as sure as day I was looking at 1 very dead deer through my scope and at 20x zoom I was extremely confident....a short time after he tells me "too late it's gone" so I lined him up behind my scope and guided him to 1 very dead deer partially obscured by a rock but definitely a deer.
Well we both laughed he had been watching the wrong bloody deer :D
Anyway easy part done my prize lay a long way off at the bottom of a all too familiar ridge.
I knew what we were in for as I shot my first red spiker further up that ridge about a year and a half earlier.
Anyway we packed up and made off for the tops to drop down the ridge from the other side as it was easier to drop down the open tussok face than to push through unknown scrub to retrieve it.

The pink dot shows where the deer was this pic was taken from where I took the shot.

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Anyway we dropped in from the saddle at the top of the tussok face and made good time down to were my deer lay.

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We knew the trip up would take a lot longer with heavy packs :oh noes:
Anyway we set about collecting every bit of useable meet including the heart into our Tatonka bison packs.
@Manchester I even christened your old svord it was perfect for the job.

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With heavy packs we set off up the slope making good use of my manuka mustering stick, it was bloody steep in places but we did it in a series of pushes usually about 30 or 40 meters at a time setting goals and resting so we could tackle each push with fresh legs.
Before we knew it we were back at the top and loading our gear into the truck.
Home for a Sheffield pie and cold beer to celebrate a successful hunt/counseling session.
Sorry if it's not as exciting as my usual stories but I'm pretty knackered but feeling very fulfilled.

Nice yarn mate

beautiful bit of land. Looks a lil kawekaish

Great to see the knife getting some honest work. Great photos and story

Cracker hunt, was that with the 7mm mag ? nice shooting anyway. Sure looks good hunting country.

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Originally Posted by Mooseman

Cracker hunt, was that with the 7mm mag ? nice shooting anyway. Sure looks good hunting country.

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Yup the rem mag so hardly stretching it but yeah that rifle is just soo accurate I'm very confident with it.
Not huge amount of animals but enough if you look hard enough long enough in the right place.
It's private land but it still gets hammered pretty hard, love it though it really is my happy place, I have learnt so much from hunting there but to be honest probably no better or worse than a lot of doc blocks which can be found nearby :)

good stuff,those svord folders are pretty darn good and easy to keep sharp too. Ive done whole deer with the mini one but the bigger version definately easier. enjoy your venison ,it looks like you earned it.

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Originally Posted by Micky Duck

good stuff,those svord folders are pretty darn good and easy to keep sharp too. Ive done whole deer with the mini one but the bigger version definately easier. enjoy your venison ,it looks like you earned it.

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Definitely paid for the last couple easy ones that's for sure :oh noes: :D
Yup did the whole deer no problem touched it up when I got home and it's back to hair popping sharp that's for sure