Thread: When it rains, it pours

As I said on Tahrs thread, We need to get a few more stories in here at this time so I feel I should make an effort.

This isn't about any special monster I've brought down, nor is it about incredible hardship and deering do.

Just a quick yarn from last years sika roar at the first spot we flew into.

The week/s before the roar are always stressful. Excitement mixed with apprehension mixed with stress and work is shuffled and and juggled, then finally put on hold. many hours of driving takes us from the top of the north to Helisika and, after saying goodbyes and switching off phones, the tension usually builds along with the excitement.

As per usual, this culminates with a noisy chopper ride, a fizzing in my mind and we're there.

We always do the giddays and whats ups with the exiting party, then the whirly bird take its rackets and f@rks off...

... and we are left with silence. Well, sometimes the odd distant roar if our trips early in the morning. Usually the odd bird. We have a tradition to not move anything, but to sit on our packs and have a beer(weather permitting). Just savour that moment. Feel the stress melt away. Watch the grasshoppers and maybe chat about some of the spots in view and their potential now the big guns are here.


Of course, we can never wait long. check out the hut, check out the meat safe, lie down, stand up, lay things out, mess things up a bit. Basically make it ours again.


2019, like 2018 was a little different. It's hot, damn hot. Might as well be bloody middle of summer.

The days go by. Nearby is a certain famous station that has some very vocal animals. There's some roaring but we all struggle somewhat to really get in on anything. We see hinds and yearlings everywhere and lose count in a couple of days. I thin my first evening I saw six, and the final evening 16.

But stags are what we're here for and they're hard to find. The warm weather has curtailed the usually scraping and rubbing so we work and we work but this year success is elusive. We let the odd little one go, but as the days go by those little fellas start to come under threat.

With a couple of nights left we all agree we need something on the ground.
I wake(early as usually), make the boys a cuppa and then in my waterproofed hut slippers(best invention ever) i make my way over to the terrace and have a nosey up the misty valley. A sika stag territory calls prom the other side of the valley, so I give a single back as a cheery good morning. He fire back.... Mmm... I think "ya never know".

A little while later a hear few snaps 180 away in the steep scrub leading down to the clearings. Putting my coffee down, I feel my heart start to race. Could he? Would he? The 308 is rested ready for action and with immaculate timing a stag pops out. He's nothing special usually, but right now he's my own special gift. I drop him with a steeply angled 150 shot.

I give a yahoo and sit down to finish my cuppa. Good morning. The boys in the hut have done the old, "where the f is he... that midget bastards watching a deer and as the grab their boots my shot rings out.

We enjoy the morning slowly having some breaky and swapping slippers for boots then down to carry him back to the whole(something almost never do these days).

A sleep until lunch and then I hit a spot on of the others has been hammering but try doing it different to him. Beating a horrible track up a shitty Manuka stream/gut and pop out eventually to find a large scrape. I call and stalk my way along the face. Time passes. Scrapes pass. Wind passes. Eventually a call works. Not only does it work deer start chasing each other all over the show in open bush all around me. There's a spiker chasing a hind, a hind and yearling running circles and a larger stag trying to tune up the aforementioned spiker.
Well not being one to look a gift deer in the mouth, I give a mew and he changes direction charging over the brow of the spur only to be confronted with me. A 'mee' stops him and 20ft and he hits the deck.



Again nothing special but for him being the culmination of a really exciting event and some succulent veni to be dropped at the butcher before we head south for the fallow rut.

Considering it's a quiet roar, it's been a great day, and I stop on the way back to the hut and listen to a stag heehawing on the other side of the valley. Just sit and enjoy the chill in the air, the sweat on my brow and spiky leaves down my back. And I appreciate the young animals that provided such adventure.


We spend the last days watching these beautiful little deer happy in their natural environment and feel comfortable not shooting any more as we still have fallow and then another sika trip straight after on a new block up high, where it's colder.... but that another story.

Plenty of you know this block. Please don't write the name down as it will cause the story to pop up in google searches of the name.

Accidentally added a sideways shot. Can't seem to remove it. Same old bs with attaching stuff here. sry

Great looking spot thanks for the right up

Cool wee write up

Its such a cool spot. I took my wife there years ago and she fell in love with. It'll be the perfect place to introduce my kid to the back country.
These days its closed over mid summer which is great. A mate just came out the other day and filmed untold animals though strangely many hinds were barren. I just hope we get down there with the dramas happening. We have to wait until the fifth then its 3 wks Bush. Im feeling its 50/50 atm.

Cool Story.

Good story thanks spent many times there good little hut, good bush hunting,must make the time to get back there .Interesting that it is closed over the summer, what months are they ???

plurry good rightup.enjoyed it all. yip I really do like that sit on pack n have a beer bit.....might pinch that one.

I think it opens around start of march. Everyone who goes there seems to rebook. Went quite a few years with out a visit.
Cheer MD. Looks like our roar is gone down the tubes. Devistated.

Wait are you in parua bay Huk? That would be a weird coincidence.

@ Cowboy I am indeed

Il pm ya. I can probably see your house.