Hi all,
Had a few missions destinations planed on different weather forecasts and wind was from the south much of the trip and the spot x plan 2 was chosen with 5 headwaters. It a fairly popular for helicopter hunting and walking in hunters. Usual story the further away from tracks and car parks the more animals.
Not in two much of rush I had 9 days food supply for myself and the hound dog. In the first 45 minutes of walking from the car park I hear a distant roar of a stag. The stags roaring every evening from 4pm onwards, there was the odd occasion that one would roar during the day. We pretty much checked out all the stags roaring and most of the winded deer the hound was onto which turns into a long drawn out day. One day in one valley the dog was onto a deer ever 20 minutes too 45 minutes.
This mission wasn’t just about securing nice trophy but a environment and pest management. So we accounted for 11 red deer, 64 goats, 17 possums the dog pointed onto during the day and 2 feral cats.
Tool of the trade the trusty 300 Blackout running both subs for minimal disturbance and super for a bit of distance shooting.
Plenty of hunting to be had in here.
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The odd bluff and waterfall to negotiate around to get onto them.
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There’s a stag roaring with two hinds a third way up in the gut.
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This is one of two hinds I shot in a mob of 7 that a stag was roaring over. They were hit with a 125gr SST supersonics at 200m and a hour stalking into a decent shooting position.The damage to the high county in this area is some of the worst I’ve ever seen in my 30+ years of hunting.
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Shot this stag in the middle of a goat bomb up 6 goats within 50m above me then this guy jumps out 30m above me runs 10m down away from the falling goats and stop 5m in front of the dog so got a 190gr sub-x in the chest and down he went too and I was straight back into 6 more goats for that salvo. To have that on video would be priceless.
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A native bird and skink killer trophy feral cat
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Another trophy the mighty Hummel he was skinny and didn’t need to breed with his sister so he got a subsonic Lehigh Defence 168gr CF for a bang flop.
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We setup a camp and had a we evening hunt in a nice little gully, got into a few more subsonic goats and possums the wind was perfect for coming back down the other side of the creek still getting a goat and possum, the stag we heard a couple of creeks over must come over to our gully to check us out roaring back at him earlier on. So it would barely 5min to 10min from shooting the last possum the dog winded the stag and pointed up in the open manuka stand above us and he’s was broadside looking straight at us, rise rifle, safety off, drop bolt put red dot on his hilar zone and pop then he drop on the shot. This was the fattest by far and had a inch of fat on his rumps and was a tasty bit of meat not being so lean.
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The next week or two and the stags will be fully roaring during the day and rutted up.
Just because it’s the roar you can have a bit of fun a get rid of the pests and cull a few deer in the problem area or leave it the DOC to sort it out with poison and WARO on the behalf of our hard earned tax money.
