Thread: Odd, unexpected and interesting things you have seen out hunting

I will kick it off.

I was out this morning looking for a deer very early with the thermal imager on private land.
It was cold, foggy and the grass was bloody wet.

I saw a rat walk along the top plain wire of the farm fence for about 50m
Can only assume it was way quicker and a whole lot dryer than going along the ground !

The things you see out hunting

This goes back to a conversation in a thread the other day but was out early in the week and saw a group of wallabies very far from wallaby country

chinese pheasant in the fern up in red deer country a couple of hundred meters into the beech at least 1km from any houses....couldnt work out WHF this red n yellow thing was that kept bobbing up n down.

We were hunting Reindeer on a mountain plateu and saw a cow Moose and Calf.

Which is a bit like seeing a Thar on the Coromandle for example

A few years back was the Ureweras was sitting and having a cuppa. Noticed an old Gin trap. One of the jaws was missing
Had to cut the chain and staples out of the tree to bring it home

years ago walking the track towards the cascade (had come from over the tikitiki) and there was this old guy ,long grey hair and beard packing up his camp ....not odd or unusual except that it was mid april it was cold and he had bare feet and was wearing a blue dress.......(must have been a south islanderr).......mate saw him later in the day heading up the te iringi towards clements.

Anyone know what happened to the old guy (also with long grey hair and beard, and walked everywhere in bare feet) that used to live in the Craigs hut area of the Ruahine's (Makaroro River). Last time I saw him was the early-mid 90's. He was possuming (among other things) and had a biv off Yeomans track. When I stayed at the hut he had a young pet possum that he 'sedated' with a handful of weed

A few years ago I was sitting near a clearing that had a few old bleached white bones on it from a previous kill. A spiker strolled on to it and started poking around, he picked up one of the bones in his mouth and then he spotted me and just stood there with it hanging out of the side of his mouth like a cigarette. What a bloody crack up silly looking pose it was, I tried to get my camera out in time but he buggered off. I've seen a few casts with the tips chewed for calcium before, bones are a supplement too it would seem.
This was the best laugh I've had in the bush with animals.

Mate spotted a young scrubby stag and spiker, so I shot the stag and the silly spiker trotted off a few yards and just stared at us whilst we roared, mewed and stood up in plain view. The silly bugger just stood there, got to within 50yds of him. Must never have seen or scented a human before, never had that happen was hard case.

Originally Posted by Mathias

A few years ago I was sitting near a clearing that had a few old bleached white bones on it from a previous kill. A spiker strolled on to it and started poking around, he picked up one of the bones in his mouth and then he spotted me and just stood there with it hanging out of the side of his mouth like a cigarette. What a bloody crack up silly looking pose it was, I tried to get my camera out in time but he buggered off. I've seen a few casts with the tips chewed for calcium before, bones are a supplement too it would seem.
This was the best laugh I've had in the bush with animals.

Osteophagia... As a guide in South Africa, I had a hard time with a group of tourists. They thought all the large mammals were carnivores and giraffe were at the top of that list. It didn't help when we saw a giraffe with knees bent like they do when drinking, except it was chewing on an antelope carcass, killed the week before by a pack of African wild dogs... Apparently it's an easy source of phosphorous and mainly herbivores will do it. Needless to say, they never believed another word I said after that, and there was no tip at the end if their week-long stay either.

Standing in what was clearly human shit in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

Then finding the t.p about 30m away

There was a good size hind standing under a small tree, mate and I thought it would be good to shoot her. My mate was all lined up to pull the trigger and I noticed something strange about it, she kept turning to lick her arse, turned out she was in the process of giving birth so tapped him on the shoulder in the nick of time.

I was out in a spot a good walk from even a track and came across an empty brief case

Undies. Why are there always random gruts in strange places. Or single shoes/boots.

Driving down the race past the neighbours deer paddock on a block I hunt in Auckland I saw a white spotty fallow buck with a shit head trotting the fence line until he saw us then ran off to the manuka. We continued on and checked out some gullys a good 8/900m further along with no luck so sitting down I let out some fallow calls and waited for a bit but again nothing so we stood up and turned to walk down to the truck only to see a head on the skyline watching us from the trucks direction! The same shitty little buck had obviously made his way up the farm to this end for some reason and must have heard our calls. Ended up with us caught out in the open standing next to each other with no chance of a safe shot so we hit the deck and I crawled on my stomach sideways to change the angle and shoot towards a hill. All the meanwhile he was cutting around watching us. Never seen a deer act like that or heard of one doing that in such open ground and people in clear site. He would have been within 50/60m of us the whole time while this was going on