Thread: He is home!

Originally Posted by Tahr

@camenzie

It was on 21/04/21

I had seen this buck in the velvet once during the summer and new he was pretty good. North Wairarapa.

Hunted his area quite a bit during the rut and very late one evening he appeared on the scrub edge at 300 odd yards, although I only ranged it later on. My shot was a bit rushed and he was a bit further than I had estimated but I thought I had hit him. Dog led me into his rutting area and followed a scent for maybe 200 yards and bounced him, but never found him. No blood. 7-08 and 140 SST.

A few weeks later I was in the general area with my grandson but about a km from where I had had the shot at him and the dog was winding into a punga gully. I was moving around behind the dog when a buck broke and bolted. I knew straight away it was him and he was limping but pretty mobile. As he was disappearing I got a shot into him at about 80 yards that anchored him and finished him with a quick killing shot - being careful not to ruin the head skin. This time I was using my 6.5x55 and 140 Amax.

When I was skinning his cape I found a perfectly mushroomed SST in his off shoulder around about the elbow joint. It had tracked right through low without hitting anything too serious and he was healing pretty well. Still felt bloody sorry for him though. He had lost a lot of condition.

When I saw him laying there I knew this was a trophy of a life time. It was just my time.

Attachment 214983

Since then my mate has shot a 212ds head in the same area with me so there must be a good bloodline. 15 years ago there were very few Fallow there and now they are taking over from the reds.

amazing what they can recover from - shot a hind to high once and only found hair - about a year later shot hind same spot and bugger me when I took back steaks of big old healed scar just behind shoulder on top of back