Thread: Video: Spring Solo Hunt in the Ruahine front country

Friday arvo I snuck out for a wander in the front country of the Ruahine Forest Park. I arrived at the Road end to find no other cars, always a great start.

There was a bit of a thunderstorm brewing and I was expecting some rain, but while there were a few threatening black clouds and lots of thunder i never actually got any rain, nice!

After seeing a deer out feeding on a clearing pretty early at 3.40pm, which must have got my wind or seen me as it gapped it just after I spotted it, bounding for the cover of the bush close by.

It was two hours later before i saw another deer, feeding in a tiny opening in the bush, I had the camera rolling and was all dialed up behind the rifle but it didn't really present a decent shot for the 5 mins that I could see it.

15 Mins later it feed out into a larger clearing just slighter further away at 597 yards, and eventually went broadside and presented a shot...

Here's a little vid of the arvo's activities.

Nicely placed shot


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Go you good thing!

Great stuff

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Originally Posted by MSL

Nicely placed shot


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I actually didnt anticipate any wind drift, so didnt allow for any, as you will see in the vid there was a left to right drift and my bullet drifted right and into the base of the neck.

Nice shooting that should be a good bit of venison.

Cool video and great shooting.

Very nice

7mm SAUM/162 AMAX does the job again. Well done. What was your POA ? neck ? or shoulder or crease ? and a bit of wind drift right to left ?

Nice vid @GWH - hearing plenty of those big Ruahine blowflies in the background too.

Originally Posted by Phil_H

Indeed it was a cool little video and good shooting.
I could only dream of pulling off a shot like that......actually I won't even dream of it in case I was ever tempted to try it. Me....I would have to be half that distance....I just accept the limits of my shooting ability.

But thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to more.

Cheers
Phil

Thanks guys, its all just practice and preparation.

I do lots of rabbit pest shooting. I use either a 17 hornet or 17 hmr, its all prone shooting, so is great practice of position and setup when prone, holding steady and trigger control.

When making the longer shots on deer you obviously need faith in your equipment. Ie consistency of the ammo and ability to accuratly allow for elavation adjustment for distance, you dont need a $3k plus scope to do this either, as long as it has repeatable adjustments and youve practiced and set up your ballistic app/drop chart to match.

That rifle i was using there is an old Factory Rem model 7 in 7mm SAUM which was a 2nd hand trademe purchase a few years back, its had the factory trigger lightened up alot. And it has a 2nd hand Sightron S-tac 4-20x50 scope on it which i purchased off here for about $700.

Its all trigger time, practicing position, cheek weld, how you hold the rifle, trigger release etc.

Putting a dialable scope on a 22lr with subs and practising at varing distances out to 200 yards will help heaps. I need 22 moa to hit 200 yards with my 22lr with subs, thats the same as shooting my 7 Saum at 1,000 yards.

Nice video, cheers for that.

Originally Posted by chainsaw

7mm SAUM/162 AMAX does the job again. Well done. What was your POA ? neck ? or shoulder or crease ? and a bit of wind drift right to left ?

It was slightly quartering away, most would have aimed behind the front leg, likely aiming to break the offside front leg, i like hitting them a little more forward than that so actually aimed pretty much centre shoulder, if not slightly rear of centre, there was wind drift from left to right as evidenced by the stuff in the air drifting across, in hindsight this had more effect than i expected and the bullet drifted right into the base of the neck. A POA of behind the front shoulder would have been the safer bet, these are some of the things we all need to consider when assessing taking these shots, ie a variance for error in wind calls, wheres it likely to hit if the wind is stronger or less than what i think it is. In lighter winds we have larger margin for wind calling errors, not so much in stronger winds.

Originally Posted by Nickoli

Nice vid @GWH - hearing plenty of those big Ruahine blowflies in the background too.

Yeah mate they were out in force already. Even as I was walking in there were swarms of them around.

Well done, great stuff.

Cracking shot !