Thread: a wee story from scribe/The Devil Looks After His Own

On behalf of a good bugger The Devil Looks After His Own
I spotted this animal from the Makirikiri Bluffs, for those that know the Western Ruahines. He was in a little clearing high up in the Makirikiri stream about half-way between the Bluffs and the Horse-paddocks. I don’t usually drop that far down to get my venison as the climb back up is a killer with a load and I usually go and look for an easier deer instead. But this animal’s coat gleamed in the late afternoon sun and he shone like a fox as only a sika stag can. Somehow he lured me down from my perch high above, down into the subdued light of the Forest to begin the stalk. I sensed that the stag was a trophy worth having even though the distance was too great to judge his antler quality, but I had that feeling and I wanted him.
As I slithered gently through the pepperwoods that clothed the top of the ridge where I could get a glimpse into the clearing I spotted him and froze. Despite the fact it was impossible for the stag to smell, hear, or see me, he was staring straight at where I lurked and he was poised to fly. I think cunning stags have another sense not generally acknowledged, particularly Sika Stags. I took a hurried shot at his neck with the sako .223 and down he went. Over the years I have learned never to trust a neck shot so I fired another into him as he rolled over the bank. On the short trip down to where he fell I replayed in my mind that brief glimpse I had of a beautiful eight point head just before the shot. This was all I had to sustain the memory for years.
Alas though, when I got to the spot where he should have been he was gone. The marks showed where he had rolled into the stream and got up and either run down stream or up. The dog could not find where he had exited the stream as the area was saturated with scent from the harem the stag had gathered there. So during the next few years when I was in the area I thought about this stag often and suffered the ‘what ifs’ that torment a man when he loses such an animal.
Time rolled on as it does until the winter of 2013 when Taihape hosted the Big Four hunting competition. My Brother and two mates who were sharing the hut with me on that fateful day I lost my stag, just happened to be at this event. At some stage of the prize giving they were admiring the above head fully mounted on the wall of the Gretna Hotel.
“Who shot that head” they asked a local. “Jimmy Barrett” he told them. Over the years we had met Jimmy once or twice in this same area so when the boys caught up with him later in the evening they asked him. “Where did you shoot that Jap on the wall Jimmy”.
“I didn’t shoot it” Jimmy admitted. “I found it dead on a clearing in the heads of the Makirikiri Stream a few years ago”. “We think we know who shot that stag“. My hunting partners told Jimmy and he agreed it was probably the same animal.
For six months no one told me about this head in the Gretna until we were back in the area at Christmas for a hunt and one of the boys said “I am going to tell you something that will upset you. We saw the stag you lost fully mounted on the wall of the Gretna Hotel”.
Well he was right. I brooded over that stag for three months and then one day as I passed through Taihape on my way down to the reunion I decided I must try to get a look at this head to satisfy this itch that would not go away. So I rang Jimmy Barrett.
“There is no way I have any claim on that head Jimmy but I would like to see it” I began. “Yeah right, if you come around to my place I will give the head to you”. Jimmy said “It will always mean more to you who shot it than to me who found it”. So I met Jimmy at his son’s house where the head had pride of place on his lounge wall. I noted the sad look on the son’s face but he did not hesitate, he took the head down and graciously presented it to me. It was a hard thing for the young fellow to do I could tell.
I asked if I could pay for the full shoulder mount. “No Graeme that is another story. We have a local Taihape Taxidermist who wanted a sika head to mount for the Sika Show. He had a head skin from out of the Army Land and my son gave him your set of antlers”. “Well he won the prize for the best mount at the show with this head. So he was pleased and there was no charge for the mounting “.
We talked for a while and I realised that Jimmy knew the country well including the secretive track down to the clearing from the Horse Paddocks that only a culler or possum trapper would utilise. Few, even among good hunters would recognise it or realise that it existed only to allow a hunter to make a soundless approach to a clearing that every year held a Jap stag and often a trophy.
Honest and generous people and ‘Good Hunters’ restore your faith in humanity don’t they?
I will never forget what Jimmy Barrett and his Son did for me.
This is no world beater as far as heads go. It’s good and it is a trophy in my eyes. It has history and I guess that is what matters in the end.
Scribe