After work hunt

Last night I went out for a hunt after work with the same mate who shot the stag last week.

We drove over the back and seeing no other vehicles anywhere parked in a spot near to where we wanted to go, it was raining and blowing at the car but the skies looked like they would be clearing.

We walked for a couple of hours to where we knew there was likely to be some reds and sat down in the waist high tussock to glass the faces we could see. About 3/4 hour before last light we heard the first roar and soon spotted the stag across the valley, he was crossing a side valley and although he stopped and roared back at us he wouldn't come any closer and just carried on up the ridge. He didn't have any Hinds so we let him go as I was preferring to get a meat animal if I could.

Only a few minutes after losing sight of him another stag roared behind us, this one sounded much closer and on our side of the valley. It took a few minutes to spot him and again he had no Hinds, he also only had one antler so I decided that I would try and take him out of the gene pool.

We watched him come down the ridge and responding to roars, then at the last minute he started moving away from us, another roar and he stopped, turned and started coming on again. I got ready and soon had him in my crosshairs while my mate kept the glasses on him. I slowly eased back on the trigger and with a crack and a solid thud I knew I had mate a hit, the stag went down and didn't move, we stayed watching for a few minutes then moved out.

Crossing the 150m to where the stag should be it was now fully dark with no moon yet and annoyingly no stag either, we searched high and low for over an hour and found nothing, nothing at all yet we had both seen him go down. Eventually we just had to admit defeat and head for home, the walk back down the valley in the almost full moon was just amazing.

So I shot my first ever deer which turned out to be a stag but have nothing to prove it, so for now I'm not counting it and will continue trying after Easter as a) I'm off to Nelson for family stuff and b) the weather forecast for around here is crap.

Go back in a few weeks. Hopefully you will be able to find him and at least salvage his antlers.

go back and have another look....it will be there somewhere,take a dog if youve got one.... it happens.they roll into a hole or under a bush and just vanish....

Good luck in yr search.

They can be elusive alive and dead, he will be there somewhere.

Have a look in the morning.
I have had to do that a few times.

A couple of tips for the future.

Leave one of you at the firing point when you go looking,they can direct you into where it is.

If you are alone or you both go.

Tie something to a bush where you shot it from,toilet paper works well.Its amazing just how much your memory of where it is changes after you have crossed a few guts and scrambled up the face to where you think it is.If you do give up,tie something else to where you stopped looking,so now you have two reference points to begin with when you go back.

Lastly,its almost always further away on foot that bullet flight. You might have to cover 750m to recover an animal from a 150m shot and maybe that confuses the mind?

Did you find any hair or blood? I've had the same thing happen.
We went back the next day and spent 2 hour searching and still nothing.

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Originally Posted by Steve123

Did you find any hair or blood? I've had the same thing happen.
We went back the next day and spent 2 hour searching and still nothing.

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No nothing at all, will try and get back out there next week, depends on what the weather does here, its pretty crappy today and the Easter forecast is for big winds Sunday Monday, but then I'm away doing family stuff over Easter anyway.

Tip.Jizzed up rutting stags can be hard to put down solid.Even with a fatal shot.They just dont know their dead.Dont know what calibre gat you tote, but irrespective after that first known fatal shot in that open Clarence country, immediately reload,back up with the cross hairs to where he dropped and wait patiently for him to bounce til light fades.As a virgin newby, resist the natural temptation to tear off to the kill.Probably wont be the last spunked up Stag this roar rotting in a gutter

Had it happen to me once - a mate found the stag years later.

Turns out it had gone waaay further down hill through the bush than I would ever have thought.

All that wasted meat...:oh noes:

If you heard the hit, then it wasnt a clip on the spine it was a hit, better go back and find him. Use hard bullets for stags that blow a hole right through. They do move but not far with air blowing through them and there will be blood.

Go back with a dog, any dog will do walk in from downwind the dog will find it.

That’s unfortunate and most of us have a story like that one. Hope you find him or goodluck on the next