I have been shooting rabbits on my parents' property for a few years, but when Uncle Puffin heard me express interest in deer hunting he was quick to take me under his wing and help get me set up.
Uncle Puffin advises that I should come on here as I should be able to find something suitable as a first centrefire rifle second-hand. He’s not actually my uncle. Puffin and my Dad have been mates since they were small kids. @NzHeavyHauler ’s Carbon M77 in 7mm-08 looked great buying, so I joined up and made the purchase. Within a couple of weeks I have added a Zeiss 2.5-8x32 courtesy of @C404 . There are a few things to iron out with the set-up, so the rifle makes a short visit to Alan Carr to sort these and to be given a safety check before sighting in.
Puffin now says he will take me to his special spot for an easy deer, though based on the terrain it turns out that the easy epithet is somewhat questionable. It’s a day trip and pick up will be at 2:15AM, but I am young and keen, and so agree. Being early June the deer will apparently be out on the slips for the last of the post-roar feeding, and we need to catch them at first light before they head back into cover. There is a delay over the Saddle Road waiting for one of the new SH3 bridge supports to be brought up the hill, and so we are now running late. Several hours of travel by torch later and it is already starting to become light. At the first location we visit, a deer is seen walking off the face just as we arrive, which is concerning. Fortunately Puffin had come in the week before to set up an alternative shooting position which would cover another likely area, so we head straight there, not worrying whether we bump something in the bush on the way.
Once in position a deer is immediately seen on the opposite face about 200m away. I’m having difficulty locating it though, and once I have there is some general fluffing around while I get comfortable for a steady shot using some tree branches and a daypack as a rest and re-acquire the animal, this time in the scope. This is plenty of time for the deer to climb back to the slip edge and depart. Bugger! Puffin is not perturbed though and finds me another but in a different direction. This requires a repositioning of both myself and the daypack which is ample time for that one to also wander out of view.
Fortunately we locate two more still feeding in partial cover, though it is clear these might be the last throw of the dice before resigning ourselves to bush stalking for the rest of the day. While one pushes deeper into the scrub and disappears, the other will have to cover a bit of open ground sidling a game trail, and so offer a shot.
I slowly squeeze the trigger while trying to calm my pounding heart. The shot echoes down the valley but I hear nothing, completely focused on the outcome. The deer takes 4 steps before tumbling down the near vertical hillside. The 160gr Norma had done its job.
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Photo of me with the deer, after pulling it up the bank and securing it to a tree for butchering.
We butchered the deer on a steep bank, a few meters above where it lay. I helped Puffin as he showed me how to separate each piece of venison and bone it out. We packed it into pillowcases and then into plastic bags after letting it cool for a while before loading up our packs. The journey back was quite relaxed and my heavy pack encouraged me down the hill.
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