I've lost count on the amount of times I've thrown on a heavy pack for multiple days in the Kaimanawas, countless hours behind the binos, creeping through the bush, always in search of a respectable stag.
Taken a bunch of hinds over the years and only laid eyes on a couple of reasonable stags but they'd always get the best of me. It all changed the other weekend!
This time my wife joined me, this would be her second proper back pack hunt, and I'm talking some pretty serious hard yards. We made it to Basecamp after a solid 4 hour walk. The following morning we made a beeline to the tops. We carefully made our way to a vantage point ensuring we don't skyline ourselves. Within literally 2 seconds I had 3 stags in my sights, bloody awesome! 250 yards below, gorging themselves. I decided to leave these stags and just enjoy the experience of watching them feed. The stag below was a nice wide 6, who know's what he'll be like in a couple of years. He wasn't what I was after
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The day carried on and we spotted a couple of hinds and a couple more young stags bounding through the tussock looking like they had satan on their tail. It got to 7:30PM and we were nestled on a nice vantage point glassing across to a ridgeline about 400m across. By now we're feeling pretty drained after a decent walk-in and then a 5:30am start this morning. I carried on glassing across the ridge and spot a hind and a fawn making their way out to feed, this was a pretty special sight, the fawn was extremely small, spotted coated and dainty, cute little thing!
2 minutes later I noticed antler silhouetted behind the ridge.. following the exact path of the hind and fawn. Slowly a big spotted orange body with solid rack came clearly into view, surveying his country. My heart rate skyrocketed, I had never seen a stag like this before in the Kaimanawas. My wife did a quick range on the Geovid's, 398metres. I got into position and maxed out my zoom on the stag, I could make out 8 points, perfectly even, shit! I have to get myself under control! I had the crosshairs on his shoulder, nervous, shaking but he wasn't going anywhere. Wife is helping me getting my breathing under control and calling out the number of clicks.
Scoped was held solid in the shoulder, gentle squeeeeze.. thwack! The stag instantly leapt, a clear impact and he stumbled towards the bush edge..
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This was the first trip with my new 7mmSAUM that had been built by Cam from Alpine Precision. Loved using this rifle.
We took the skin, head and 10KG of deboned meat. It was a tough mission back home, extremely proud of my wife for gritting her teeth and putting in some serious hard work.
The head is being velvet euromounted
Cheers for reading!
