Ladies & Gentlemen Hunting
There’s no one I enjoy hunting with more than my wife.
It’s an occasion I look forward to and wish could come around more often, but life being busy as it is we’re usually looking at just a couple of decent trips together every year. To be fair, she’s got a whole bunch of other things to get on with, she’s happy with her hunting opportunities when they come along.
This time round we were back at the Ruapehu District property. Since the last post about deer control, we’ve been hard at it and it’s really starting to show. The deer are not browsing with impunity in the open like they once were, and the hinds and their fawns are hiding in the scrub until well after deer o’clock. I’ve been here a week and I’ve only seen two shootable hinds so far, something I wouldn’t have believed a year ago. But the stags and spikers are out and about, and this being Jan / Feb hunting, it’s them I’m after.
Deer habits have been changed by new deer fencing around the river flats. Whereas previously the deer would usually troop down out of the native onto the front country, now they are stopped at the bottom of the back paddocks, the big wide gullies and basins that climb steeply up to 700m. Like it or not, the deer are left with no option but to rob grass on the wide open back paddock faces.
So these circumstances in this kind of country means its medium range shooting time. When deer come out to feed in the back paddocks, you can’t stalk into them as there’s zero cover and you’ll stand out like a sore thumb. Unless of course you feel like crawling 500m on your belly through the thick as thistle patches with the guaranteed outcome of being spotted just before you get to a decent shooting position. No thanks. The back paddocks are very steep, so it’s far better to stand off a ways and let the deer come to you. A good tactical plan is the order of the day – choose a rifle / cartridge that can easily drop deer at 400m+, get to an elevated position with a wide field of view so that you have relatively flat shooting and start glassing the bush edges before deer o’clock.
We’ve been coming here long enough to have some pretty primo spots. We’d seen a couple of fat red stags during the first evening’s reconnaissance so it was time to put one in the freezer. All we had to do was pick our spot according to the wind; we chose a prominent knob that sits central to a wide basin with an average range of about 375m to the bush edge… This was easy as Ladies & Gentlemen Hunting because we were able to park the Hilux a short distance away out of sight of the deer (and out of the wind), walk a few hundred metres and settle in. Not exactly strenuous. But after some of the tough as days in the relentless heat of the past week or so, I ain’t complaining.
The wife and I divvied up the faces so we knew whose deer was whose. I had the 6mm Creedmoor / 108gr ELD-M and the wife had the .308 Winchester / 165gr BTSP. We’d been glassing for no more than five minutes when the wife made an excited whisper-yelp and pointed. Crikey, they were coming out already, we’d nearly been too late.
Right on the edge of the native stood a large bodied red stag, thrashing his head in some light scrub. I could see his head clearly with the naked eye, and ranged him at 275m. He stepped back behind a low hillock and ambled down the bush line towards us, his antlers clearly visible. He stopped periodically for a thrash, and when he stepped out into clear country, the range had reduced to 250m. Perfect.
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I really enjoy spotting as it gives me a chance to watch proceedings with all the detail, and this was no exception. The wife was set and ready to go – you can’t bugger around when this woman is on the tools as she’ll have taken the shot and set off to fetch the deer by the time you dick around with cameras or suchlike. As usual the shot came earlier than I expected but there was no doubt about the solid hit – the animal froze with a great spasm right through the torso, then lurched forward. A fat THWOP came back to me confirming the hit. The wife was reloading but I didn’t think it would take long before he went down. Ha! Remarkably, the stag turned and took off downhill into wide open country straight towards us. This, I didn’t expect. The wife had kept the animal in the Trijicon’s wide sight picture and I noted her tracking the animal down the face, having stayed glued to the Tikka’s DPT chassis. The second the stag stopped and turned, looking very shaky, she shot him again. THWOP! I saw a large puff of dry dust behind the animal as it collapsed spectacularly, and then the best bit, rolled all the way down to a small bench about 2m above track.
It simply cannot be better organized than that. Convenience exemplified.
I watched the stag for signs of life. A couple of kicks and that was it. Lights out. For once we had enough light to cut up the animal before dark, so the dreaded face full of bugs in the headlamp could be avoided. As we packed up the gear, I was feeling very deeply in love with my wife… Awww… Can I say that here? Is soppiness allowed? The look on her face told me she was pretty pleased with herself too.
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The animal was every bit as heavy as I expected. A solid, thick timbered, symmetrical 8 pointer, just starting to rub off velvet. We pulled him down onto the track and I fetched the truck. Being an L&G Hunt, we packed the rifles and gear away sat back to admire the scene with a couple of cold Lion Browns from the Engel. No need to rush, eh.
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We set about the butchery – metre long backstraps and the kind of hindquarters meat that will restock the venison mince supply for a good while. When I peeled back the hide from the forequarters, I noted that both shots had hit the middle of the shoulder within an inch of each other, perfect marksmanship. The Speer BTSP, being a soft fragmenting bullet, had wreaked carnage and the animal had bled out entirely which always improves the meat quality. The second bullet had exited the offside front leg with a neat ½” hole, the first I assume was still in it. It defies belief that these animals can go on a dead run like that with this kind of damage.
Once the fridge was packed, gear stowed and we’d tipped the remains of the animal over the edge of the track, we sat on the track with a couple more Lion Browns to watch darkness descend over the valley. Ruru started calling, the odd sheep baa, no more cicadas. The wind had dropped entirely. A bright low orbit satellite cruised a giant arc overhead. There are fleeting moments when life is perfect, and this was one of them.
More stories to follow in due course.
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A footnote. The following evening, I walked down the same track into a mob of pigs feeding on the stag carcass. All that was left was the odd bone and one half of the rib cage which was being fought over by several weaners. Everything else, gone. Just a stain in the grass.
