Over the weekend just gone I took my Father and another older mate that lives around the corner from me over to Wanganui for a Boys hunting/shooting getaway.
My Dad did plenty of hunting in his younger years and through the meat hunting days, but hasn't shot a deer now for around 30 years, i'm slowly getting him back into it. Its just nice spending time with him doing what he used to love and still talks so fondly about.
The plan was to have it a fairly easy trip, using a quad to get up into the hunting area and spend time behind the binos and see what was about. Also to do a bit of longer range steel shooting, to get him to shoot further than he has before.
The animal numbers were quite disappointing, with only 4 fallow seen the whole time (and two of those were fawns). My mate Peter shot a young one on the first night. He's only just getting back into hunting after a almost 2 year break, and it was the first animal hes shot with the new hand-loads that i have made for him and re-sighted his rifle to make better use of Point Blank Range. He pulled off a great shot at around 250 yards (which is a long way for him), he was stoked.
Things never ended up working out for my Dad shooting a deer. I offered him the shot of an adult doe, but he wasnt able to get a steady rest etc, so he told me to shoot it in the end. And he missed another one later on. And after that there were no more opportunities unfortunately due to the low animal numbers.
Dad and Peter had a great time and seemed to really enjoy the steel shooting, we ended up with 3 fallow, all be it two very young small ones, but it was slim pickings, but im sure they will be tender and tasty. We also thinned the goats out a little more too.
Here's a little video of the trip.
https://youtu.be/yeoqULlzDN8
