6 Attachment(s)
First South Island Fallow Buck
I used to do a heap of pig hunting around North Canterbury and always saw a reasonable amount of deer sign, I was told there were a few Fallow in this particular area although I never saw any while pig hunting, that wasn’t a surprise though as I was never especially looking for Fallow, or deer in general while running the dogs.
So on this hunt I decided to leave the hounds at home to search for some Venison, I didn’t care what species as long as it was red meat. I left at the crack of dawn and had a fairly slow walk due to early morning fog, by the time I got to the top of where I was hunting it was well after sunrise, time to sit and wait for the sun to burn off the fog, while I was enjoying the view I made a game plan, I had no idea what area to hunt down into, one valley was as good as the next I figured, to be honest I didn’t think my chances would be fantastic as its public land and gets a bit of a pasting most weekends by pig hunters, I figured deer would be very spooky and may not stick around with dogs running about. Still I was here and the weather was improving greatly as each minute ticked by.
It didn’t take long for the cloud and mist to bugger off, with that I was off down into a valley with ideas of hunting the bottom where I figured grass would be a bit wetter and greener. It probably took me an hour to get down into a small stream, it looked like the part, green grass, good cover and amazing weather, how could I fail I thought? The breeze was in my face so I continued to do the sneaky thing and pay close attention to each little clearing I came upon, there was very little in the way of sign but I figured I’m here now, keep going.
I must have gone about 400 yards along the valley floor and was becoming very disheartened at the lack of sign, I sat down on the edge of a clearing and started thinking about a possible plan B, just at that moment I saw movement at the furthest edge of the clearing, it looked like fluffy Toitoi flowers waving around in the wind, “what the fuck is going on here” I thought, it was not windy at all so this struck me as highly unusual, looking through my scope I saw a set of antlers waving about, “shit here we go, it’s on now” I couldn’t see a body so hesitated, for all I knew it could be some silly bastard hiding in the bush with a deer strapped to his back, I watched for probably what was 20-30 seconds, then two big brown eyes came into view, blinking eyes! followed by a nose, a mouth, yup that’s a Fallow Buck staring at me, it was slowly lifting its head up, now about 6 inches of its neck was exposed, one more check just to be sure, black nose twitching, eyes blinking, ears flicking, I lined up the centre of his face and squeezed the trigger, “Boomf” Mr Buck disappears without a trace, I was sure I hit him but he vanished so fast, could I have missed? I went over and checked the area, here he was stone dead, the bullet entered his snot box and out through the back of the head, “yep that will do it”. I was over the moon, my first South Island Fallow, back legs off and his noggin tied to my back, now the very long walk back home.
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The walk down to the valley bottom
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The lucky, (or unlucky for Mr Buck) furthest end of the clearing
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