Thread: Overnight meat hunt.

Another trip into the Tararua's, this time I stayed the night. I managed to get away Tuesday late morning after having some work to catch up with on Monday.
Weather seemed pretty good, the wind was quite strong Tuesday afternoon when I got in there though.
Wednesday morning was a ripper, not even the slightest breeze, I could see the sky was blue in the fading darkness as the sun slowly started creeping up.
I checked my usual spots and first live critter seen was a yearling spiker. I watched him for a while and noticed he stopped a few times and kept looking back, no doubt looking at his mates but buggered if I could see them, probably among the Toitoi somewhere.
I put a round through him with the 270 and then looked for any other movement, nothing. I crossed the river to check he dropped where I shot him, yep no drama there, he was proper dead. I then quickly took off further up river to see if anything else was out. I got about 500 m further up and saw 3 adult looking hinds standing right on the bush edge, they didn't seem rattled so probably didn't hear the gunshot over the noise of the river. I watched them for about 30-40 seconds before the darkness of the bush swallowed them up, its always nice to watch animals when they are unaware, these ones were always going to be safe from me as they all looked fairly chubby in the guts area, pregnant most definitely.

I went back to the spiker and boned out everything I wanted. He was still in hard antler as well.
I had met two young fellas in there who were tramping, I gave them one of the back steaks, they seemed like good lads and were very appreciative of that.

Fairly lazy walk back out today, I stopped at a couple of likely spots in the river, its fair to say that my hunting is far better than my fishing skills.

I still have a few days off work (more than a few) I will be out again somewhere pinging over more young yearlings.