I didn't look much if there was somewhere to post story's so I will just do it here, enjoy.
Two ‘’Hunters” Are Born.
Well, technically we have hunted before but this hunt made Matthew and I ‘’Real’’ Hunters and paved a path that would set us off in our hunting careers, sure we have hunted and shot deer before on farms, sure we have hunted in bush and shot deer with adults but we have got to the age where we have together a firearms licence and a drivers licence so we were set to go, This particular hunt took place at a DoC block, Kumi Pakarea conservation Area, Or Kumi as we like to call it. Any way, we had been getting excited all week and couldn’t wait to get out there, we had our permits sussed out; the permit was for the 19/11/2011 and expired on the 20/11/2011, On Friday afternoon when school finished I raced home and started packing, I had all my gear laid out on Thursday so all I had to do was throw it in the bag and wait for my pick up. After packing my bag I got trusty 6.5x55 out of the cupboard, grabbed a half filled box of ammo and placed it next to my bag. I waited for a further 20min when Matty came up the drive in his Ute (Good ole Ford Courier) I took my bag outside and placed it on the deck and tied it to the bars that run along the front of the deck with hay bale twine then threw my boots into the dog box, Placed my rifle on the back seat and then we hit the road. So we left my house and boosted over to New World where we bought us some Pepsi and Mountain Dew long with other things namely junk food like chips and biscuits. After we finished pissing around in the supermarket we headed over the Chinese shop to get some dinner for the first night. After we had got that we hit the road leaving Wairoa and headed for Kumi. Once we got off the main road we came onto a gravel road and were looking for Kumi road which comes off the gravel road we were on. After we passed one road I looked back and thought that it might have been the road we were meant to take but we decided it wasn’t and carried on up the road. After driving up the road a little more we came up over a hill and as we were going down there was a road that went left and at the start of the road was a blue sign that we could make out as Kumi Rd. As we got closer we confirmed our suspicion and turned down it and carried on down this road as we passed a wool shed and went through a few gates until we hit the forestry. We kept on driving up road until we came upon the locked gate; this was the walk the rest of the way point. We got out and put our boots on, got the rifles out of the bags put some bullets in the magazines then we chucked on the bags and away we went. We walked a whopping 30m from the gate when we ran into our first problem, there was a milk bottle we had that was filled with water and it decided to shit itself on Matty’s bag, most likely due to it being made of shitty plastic and being tied to the back of the bag with a bit of baling twine so it got knocked a fair bit but after I sorted this problem out, That means I took that bloody bottle And kicked it as far as I could away from us right down to the bottom of a pretty big slip. After that small dilemma we carried on up the road until we got to a shitty old hut that had no windows no doors and had been overrun by bloody stinking goats. We decided to drop the bags of here and head up the road a bit to give the old shoulders a bit of a break and as I walked up ahead slightly of Matthew, I stopped on a high point on the road as I saw a very nice clearing on the right hand side of the road. There was a bit of manuka at the front of the clearing and was right in-between anything on the clearing and anything on the road. As Matthew slowly came up he stopped in his tracks and whispered Deer Oi, so I turned around and sure enough here is a young stag feeding by himself on the clearing no more than 80m away and he hadn’t even noticed me standing there. Matthew and I sat down and slowly crawled up to a high point behind the manuka, lying there prone we discussed who’s shooting and after quick approval we agreed Matty takes the first shot. We sat there both prone as we waited for the right moment. I lined the stag up in my scope just in case a second shot was needed. Matthew Lined up the shot with his .270 and squeezed the trigger, Boom! With a loud echo noise from the shot ricocheting from the valley walls the young stag dropped in his tracks. After shaking hands and going over to collect our harvest we started to gut it and well, it was a son of a bitch to gut, it was the weirdest bloody deer the both of us had ever gutted and man it took some time. After pissing around trying the gut the good damn thing we thought we better wash our hands so we walked off the clearing and went down a fairly step bank to reach the creek. We washed our hands and went back to the deer, we got a leg each and dragged it back to the shitty old hut where we hung it in a tree and placed a stick in its guts so it could cool down quicker then loaded the bags on the back and carried on up the track. We headed down a short bit crossed the creek that we had washed our hands in just a few minuets ago and started the great big walk up the hill. We slowly made our way up this giant hill. Once we reached the top we looked for a perfect camp, We placed our packs on the ground and walked around a bit searching when there it was right next to the packs the most perfect spot a hunter could ask for. It was sheltered for any wind and was almost perfectly flat (Next time we will take a spade and flatten it properly). It had a soft springy fern on the ground so we set up the main fly then placed the tarp on the ground and it was almost like a blanket, That springy fern is magic to sleep on. We un-packed our bags and set everything up before eating our Chinese. After everything was done we sat down had Chinese and drunk some Pepsi and enjoyed a bit of relaxing time and looked back on what had happed in the last few hours. After enjoying our relaxation time we started to clean up and started heading along a ridge to some clearings before it got dark to see if any deer would come out on them. Before long we were just coming down a small ridge that divided the 2 main clearings and just as we sat down a yearling jumped up and started trotting away. After we noticed it, it has slowly kept on moving away so I lined it up in my scope, Wait a minute my bi-pod isn’t out, so I opened out the bi-pod then looked back through the scope, hold up just one second, I adjusted my scope and zoomed in onto the deer a bit better. After all this time mucking around the deer had made it to around 120m and was in clear line of sight. I slowly squeezed the trigger and the deer dropped on the spot rolling down the bloody hill a few meters. I unloaded the empty cartridge and loaded in a fresh one. Matthew and I sat there laughing about what just happened then we heard a noise come from the same patch of bush the yearling ran out of. We waited thinking it could possibly be another deer but after a few minutes and light fading fast we decided to get over to the deer to gut it before it gets too dark. We got to the deer but the sun was pretty much gone down so we turned on the head lights as I gutted this yearling, after an easy gutting session we place the carcass under a small scrub bush for the night. We slowly made our way back to camp trying not to look down as we were walking alone a ridge that was at least 200m-400m down and was bloody near vertical. It was scary as hell when you look down it with the head light but he light fades into the darkness. We got back to camp safely and unloaded the remaining cartridges from the magazine and placed the guns next to where we slept. We sat down and enjoyed each other’s company while we ate the rest of the Chinese that was left over from before. After we had finished we hit the hay and got ready to go for an early hunt the next morning, Even though we went to bed at around 11:00 O’clock we woke up early and had a quick breakfast then left the camp and headed back out to the same clearings. We didn’t sit down this time as we wanted to hunt some new ground so we moved on along the ridge and then we made a left at a fence line and followed it down to another huge clearing full of lush green grass. There was a motor bike we had stumbled on and thought we would walk down it and see where it would take us. After a 1km or 2 we came upon another hunter who had a rifle in his hand and a smoke in the other. He wondered right up to use and we stood there lucky to be 3m away from him before he noticed us, He was pretty arrogant and just mumbled “did you guys see anything on the big clearing at the end of this track” and we said “Nah nothing there but we shot 2 deer yesterday” and with that he just turned around and left. So we turned around thinking what a dick head trying to poach, What is the point of hunting if you’re going to get stoned as that’s the only reason I can think of for someone to not noticed two young men with rifles walking 50m towards you and not notice them until there’re standing 3m away. Funny thing was we found out we were poaching, turns out that nice clearing with lush green grass was the boundary for the hunting block we were in, we had stumbled onto a farm. This was an accident, just too clear things up. So after that accident we carried on back up the track we had just come down stopping every now and again to check for any deer in the tree’s as they can be just sitting there and we could walk right on by. We walked back up the fence line and followed the ridge back to our camp. On the way back along the ridge we dropped off and went down to my yearling I had shot the night before and boned him out. While boning it out I cut my thumb down to the bone which in return didn’t stop bleeding 4 hours. Lucky it bleeds very slowly but 4 hours was just ridicules. When we got back to our camp we had a feed again then relaxed for a good 30min before going out and lighting a fire to dry out all our wet gear as it had been a misty type rain while we were out hunting. We walked out 15m from the camp and cleared a big area then started a fire, we also cut down a manuka tree and laid it high across the fire so that it wouldn’t burn but is low enough to hang our gear down to dry it out. We sat around down sweet piss all when we noticed the water was running low. So we decided to stack the fire and go for a walk and fill up the empty Pepsi and water bottles. We loaded up the rifles and started walking down the giant hill to get to that small creek while Matthew and I had a good old yarn. After a little while I said “Maybe we should be quite, we never know what is down here” but then we decided to keep talking as we figured animals won’t be down here the smoke from the fire is coming directly down this hill and so we carried on chatting and a few steps later saw us stop in the middle of our tracks. There were fallow deer looking at us about 20m away and just as the rifle comes up they all trot off. We looked at each other and thought what the hell just happened, we looked back and there were goats still there but the fallow we saw were gone. Those goats are so dumb. We dropped our bag with all the bottles in it and walked off down the hill after them but after a quick walk down, it revealed nothing. We walked back up and got our bag then carried on down the hill without a word. Before long we were back at camp with water and thought it is getting late maybe we should get out to the ridge we were out on. It didn’t take long and we had our shit sorted and were steaming along the ridge to get out on the clearing. When we got there we still had over 1 ½ hours left of sun light and so we just sat there and waited silently. When it started to get dark it got really cold which was weird because the night before that was good as gold. After it dark nothing showed so we left and headed back to camp were we had a quick dinner and went to sleep. We slept in this morning and didn’t go hunting until something around 9. We loaded up the rifles and completely skipped breakfast and headed in opposite directions for the first time hunting by ourselves. Matty went along the ridge while I went back to where we saw the fallow. After a quick 30min walk I came back to the camp to find Matthew asleep. I woke him up and we prepared the best meal any camp could have and we named it out back stew. This is how we made something we will make every time we go camping again for the rest of our lives. We cut a few bits of meat from the boned out yearling and peeled some spuds and sweet potatoes and put them onto a plate. I had rice on the boil and had mixed Gravy and beef stroganoff and goulash from the little packets of ready mix things and put it all into the same pot, it was the best thing since sliced bread. After we gobbled up that we packed up our camp and headed out. We walked back down the giant hill and crossed the stream then we walked the short bit back to the shitty old hut. We again dropped off our bags to give the old shoulders a break, we went to start going up the road to check the clearing when we saw a goat so Matthew lined up but it ran up the road so we followed it up the road then we saw it standing up a small hill. Matthew lined it up using a pine tree as a rest and let off his shot. Boom! The goat dropped and then I saw it get back up so I shot at it freehand and it dropped. After a quick climb we discovered two goats lying there dead. It turns out the goat I saw jump up was a goat that was standing behind the same goat Matthew shot so from what I saw it was Matty’s goat drop and then the other one jumped up which i thought was the same goat he shot. After mucking around Matthew and I walked back picked up our bags and walked back down the road. We saw a few more goats and Matthew took a shot freehand and missed so I thought I should take a crack at it. I cocked the bolt and let her rip and rip she did. With a load bang and a crack of smoke the goat lay there dead with a massive squirt of blood from its neck. We dragged the goat off the side of the road and got our gear packed up and moved on out. We carried on down the road a bit more and Matthew saw another goat about 80m away and went prone and took the shot. He hit the goat in the neck right where he was aiming so we walked over checked it out and carried on out. We got back to the truck had a break put the bags the meat from the deer we had shot and our stinking clothes on the back got into fresh clothes and away we went. We said bye as we were leaving but we both knew we would be back.
P.s Our clothes stunk really bad from the fire we used to dry them, Turns out manuka smoke and wet clothes don’t mix, Just a heads up to other hunters thinking this is a good idea.
Mattys deer
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My deer
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Simple Does It
While at my mate’s house one time we decided we should shoot a deer because we needed a little bit of meat, yeah this should be simple. We laid out our plan, get out there before light, shoot the deer, and come home, done. As easy as that. Not. We woke up ready to go before dark had breakfast and drove out to our trusty hunting grounds, got there just as light was peaking over the surrounding hills, sweet. We loaded up our rifles and started the walk and after walking up a small hill that took us 10mins, bang. We had a mob of deer, mostly all yearlings too (Prime eating meat) running around us all of them within around 10m of us, we literally almost got run over by deer! , good times. Any way after we didn’t shoot because we couldn’t believe what just happened I saw a nice fat yearling sitting 100m away looking at me so I said “Should I go for it” Craig said “ Yeah, why not”. Boom! I sent 140grns of 6.5x55 projectile its way and it hunched down like a hit and slowly made its way over the small ridge, sweet easy as that. Not. Turns out I missed as we couldn’t find a body or blood or anything to show proof of a hit, just seemed like a hit the way it hunched forward and slowly made his way. I blamed the long range free hand shot as the reason I missed, Wouldn’t you. After mucking around we went back to the truck and went for a trout fish, didn’t get anything so we went home and done nothing until the next day. Next morning same procedures get up before dark, have breakfast, drive to the hunting grounds, and walk to the same spot we did. Bang. We saw 2 deer about 400-500m away so we made our way down to them and not far from where saw them we saw a few more. Sweet there not far to get. We crossed a muddy creek took of our boots and socks, oh I forgot to mention that it was raining all this time too not heavy just enough to soak us. Anyway we made our way over to these deer. Once we got close enough we dropped on our guts and made our way even closer, we came up to this fluffy bit of grass and lay there behind it. Craig pop’s up his head, turns and say’s “There’s 6” Then looks again, turns back and say’s “There’s 10” Looks one more time getting higher and say’s “Oh fuck it there’s too many to count”. (Rough estimate of around 30-40) We were also 30m from the most distant deer and 5m from the closest deer. We picked our targets and counted down “3, 2, 1”. BOOM! BOOM! Both shots rang out and the deer were going everywhere almost on us too! No deer were dead but there was one hit so I lined up on the shoulder and shot again (I would have gone neck shot but since the deer didn’t drop the first time I thought it must be out) It stood there looking at us so Craig shot it through the neck and it dropped on the spot. After gutting it we found 1 shot in the shoulder right where I aimed smashing both lungs to bits. We found Craig’s shot in the neck but we also found another shot in the back legs. After pulling out the projectile I confirmed it was my projectile. To this day I don’t know how I hit it there. Anyway we walked back to the truck and parked right next to the deer threw it on the back and left. We went fishing again but still didn’t catch anything. We went home and got a feed then took this deer to the chiller. After that we went to a spot where we could back the truck to the river edge so we could clean the blood out. We washed it out and went to leave but no. We were stuck, Bloody Holden’s for you. Truck was a Holden Rodeo 2wd. We were lucky that a farmer was driving down the road mustering some cattle we told him our problem and he said he will be back in half an hour. We pissed around waiting then after a little while he returned in his very old 2wd tractor. Now we came to our second problem. He had this old rope so we tied it up and snapped it instantly. So he pulls out this very short piece of chain, really thin chain too. We had no link or anything though but there was a crusher on the other side of the road so we went there and found us some hay baling twine. Yep you guessed it; we tied the chain together with hay bailing twine and the tractor pulled us out. So in the end everything that should be simple wasn’t but that didn’t hold us back as we just found another use for hay bailing twine!
I cant find the photo's, sorry
Lone Wolf
I have heard so many stories about hunters going out by themselves against the wilderness hunting for game in any weather any time anywhere; they do the hard yards and reap the rewards. I too wanted to be just like them in those stories but found it extremely difficult to be able to get out there and do it. Things kept holding me back. My first plan was made up at school while in class I thought about the idea of me going up to Lake Waikaremoana on Thursday night and coming out Sunday all by myself. I Was really keen and I asked my dad he was pretty good with the idea but my mum on the other hand, Well that’s a different story, She was pretty paranoid about the whole thing saying stuff like you have school Friday, you have work Friday/Saturday nights, you could hurt yourself and no one knows what will happen. That stopped that plan dead in its tracks. Any way over the weekend I kept the idea in my head and as Sunday approached I had a new proposal for my parents. What about I go to another block which is closer to home and I come out Monday night. After a bit of talking I was set to go. I arrived at 3 pm and went to start walking down the fence line to the gorge at the bottom of the block when two other hunters stopped me. We shook hands and then after greeting one another he told me to stay out of the pine block. He then started going on about how other people have been coming in and poaching in the pine block so I said ok I won’t go in (Wasn’t my intentions any way) and we parted as I walked down the fence line and came to the gorge. I walked right to the edge where it drops to the papa creek bottom 10-15m below me. ‘’Well I can’t get across here I thought to myself’’ and so I carried on back up the hill 100m and then walked straight into the bush. It was the thickest crap ever I wouldn’t be able to see 2m in front of me half the time it was like this for 50-60m until it became clearer. The thick stuff was made of little trees about 1-2m in height and they had very small trunks about 1-3 cm thick and big bright green leaves about 5-10cm in diameter. After smashing through this stuff with my back pack on, I crossed a small creek and made my camp on the opposite side where it flattened out before rising up steep again. This spot will have to do as it started to rain so I set up really fast then realized I had no bloody pegs for my fly so I looked for something to use as pegs but found nothing. Only found some supple jack vines which are no good and some roots which were either too big to even worry about cutting to size with a knife or to small that they snapped easy and flexed too much. I looked into my bad and found a pile of hay bailing twine so with a bit of tying I had my fly up nice and good.( Don’t under estimate hay bailing twine, We have pulled out a Holden Rodeo with it before, but that’s another story). After I had camp sorted I went for a quick walk before the night came. I walked 50m from my camp and sat down and watched a clearing on a slip across the gorge but it soon started getting dark and I hadn’t seen anything so I left and went back to camp. I got in my dry clothes jumped into my sleeping bag while eating liquorice and playing games on the cell phone. I noticed the time was 6.30pm so I went to sleep. I woke up at around 4pm and heard one stag roar up the valley pretty far away so I had a bit of hope for the morning and I got my breakfast out. One can of spaghetti was good and I then found the other thing I have forgot, a can opener. I got my knife and rammed it into the top of the can and spilt it open then came the third thing I forgot, a fork. I put my kiwi ingenuity to the test but I couldn’t find anything clever to use so I improvised a cunning solution, cardboard. I cut bits of rectangle shaped cardboard and used them as a fork. After a bit of mucking around eating I decided it was light enough to go out for a hunt so I left camp and started the walk. One step from camp and I saw a more pork sitting in a tree but couldn’t get a photo as it was still really dark. A little while later chainsaws started up in the pine block next door so I wasn’t a very happy camper. After my walk that morning without seeing anything and being soaked to the bone as it was still raining I decided I was going to leave. I got to camp and had stuff packed within 10min and went to start leaving when a loud shot rang from the pine block. Hmm that was close I thought to myself as I crushed a path out through the small plants. I was out on the road by 9am and Dad had told me he will pick me up at around 6-6.30 that night so I thought hmm I might just walk out. I figured it will take 4-5 hours of hard walking to get home so I put the gun on my back with the bolt and mag out then hit the road. I walked a good 20 min when a white Ute came burning down the road. They drove past and I waved as the waved back the he stopped and reversed and asked if I want a ride. Yea sure Thanks so I jumped into the truck and we drove back into town. The guy was my mate’s dad so it worked out good in the end. Even though I didn’t get any thing I still like to think I have achieved something Good as it is something I have wanted to do for a long time. Go into the bush as a Lone Wolf.
Tank man himself lol joking
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No pegs, No problem
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note to self, bring a fork next time
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Wasn't the best weather
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Closest thing I found to an animal
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Hunting The Kaimai’s
So I have hunted around home a fair it and got used to the type of hunting that is done here. But as soon as I got to the Kaimai’s with my Uncle I found out that this was a whole new game to play. The bush was very different from what we have here in Wairoa and it was 10 times harder to hunt it at first. So I will share my story with you and hope you will learn as much as me.
As we pulled up into the Doc car park My Uncle John said “Aye they blocked off the road” but as we soon discovered it was blocked while they fixed the road. You see there is a car park then there is a road that leads to this other car park and they blocked the bit in between the two car parks. Any way we walked down this newly built gravel road at the time as at time of me writing this it was gravel but it soon may be sealed. Any way we left the road and headed off down the track which at the started dropped instantly to a creek. Very steep track and two things that made it worse was people had use this track to get quad bikes around the park so it was dug out deep in places and really high in other places so the track ended up being very rough and it was the roar which was good but it seemed to be wet which made it hard going. We had a good walk for the first hour, you see there are two tracks you walk on and Uncle John named it the first hour and the second hour the first hour being the roughest shit ever and the second hour being a nice long walk but very easy walk. The second hour track is all old forestry tracks from back when they harvested native timber which leads me to why it is so hard to hunt. Because it has been cut out before it is now all regenerated bush and has not grown very big and tall and instead is all short and you can’t walk under it very easily like here at home. But any how we finished the first hour track and got onto the second hour part which was easy going and we walked for a little while crossing some creeks then we heard our first animal. A rustle came from in the bushes and we all stopped dead in our tracks and waited while we heard this animal walk around, we presume it was a deer but after a short period of time we just left as it was too thick to see into and a waste of time trying to stalk as it would just leave as you tried to enter the thick bush. After that nothing really happened as we got to our camp site. Choice someone had been here and levelled it out built a small cabin that had gear stored in the built some walls made of punga that were used as windbreaks it was awesome. We unpacked our gear set up camp and done nothing for a little while. After that we decided to go out for a quick night hunt. We walked up a road crossed a small creek and the road forked. My uncle went left up a road known as Clay road and I just carried on up the road. I got to a fork and remembered Uncle telling me to go right so I made a right hand turn and carried on up this road until I came upon the skid site he was talking about. It was an old skid site that had a bit of fresh sign on it then I heard my first roar for the weekend. I sat down and waited a while before hearing a gun shot in the same area were the roar came from so I made my way back to the first fork and waited my Uncle John and Luke my brother to get back. After a short time they came back and we went back to camp and had dinner. We had Keweka meals they were really awesome. After that and a few story’s we went to sleep. Early in the morning we awoke to roaring stags which was a good sign. I got out of the sleeping bag and let out a moan and got a reply and this went on for a while before he stopped. We had breakfast and started the walk over to some clearings to see if anything was out there as the stag was roaring in this general direction too. We got to the last big clearing and the stag roared so we got behind some cover and roared back he grunted and we let out a roar then he shut up. After 5 minutes we heard sticks breaking across the clearing but couldn’t see him then it stopped. After a few more minutes we made our way over to the bush he was in but nothing was there. Oh man this sucks I thought then uncle said there is a wallow just in the bush a bit so we made our way over to it. Before long we were at his wallow and uncle grunted really loud. Crash, Thump, Snap. He was charging in full bore. Oh shit here we go. Me and uncle both loaded the rifles and lined them up this track that came onto the wallow then you hear the stag run away just before he came into sight. We were gutted to say the least so we unloaded the rifles and walked back to camp. During the day we set off on another hunt and were walking along the track when we spooked off a deer so I went in for a quick walk but it revealed nothing so I came back on the track and we carried on down the track. After a short time we heard more noise on the side of the track so we slowed right down then uncle raised his trusty .303 but didn’t shoot as the hind jumped out of sight we followed it along the track before we came to a good looking place to get into the bush. We went in and came onto a creek which was really nice. It was shallow and has nice green grass all along the sides. We walked down it a bit but found nothing so we came back to the track and walked back out. While walking back we heard a roar, we checked the time it was only 1 in the afternoon, and we couldn’t believe it. We assumed it was a human but roared back anyway then it roared back a few times and shut up and went quiet. Uncle reckons it was on the clay road just down from our camp site and as we got there sure enough there were stag prints everywhere all along the road. We got back to camp and then had a rest before going back out. We had a quick night hunting but nothing no roaring or anything so we just left it and went back to camp. In the morning nothing was really happing so we packed up camp and as we were doing it stags started to go nuts so we roared at them then headed out. All though we didn’t come home with anything that time it was still a good weekend out hunting for some deer in the Kaimai’s.
I will get pictures another day its pretty late atm Im gonna head to bed, Also sorry about them being long.
