View from the front shows the size better.
Attachment 286081
Caused quite a stir locally at the time. Had been spotted over successive seasons and by reports, had been shot at about five times. As I’d not long moved back to Mosgiel from Te Anau, I copped a fair bit of flack for being an interloper from the so called locals who thought that, that was their hunting patch, just luck, it was a farm escapee, blah blah blah. Even had Mr Bruce Banwell pop in to have look it sometime later. He said at the time, that with the size and Windsor throwbacks, it had Otago herd written all over it. Certainly not the first decent head to come out of the Mahinerangi area.
Scoring wise, it got heavily penalised for lack of symmetry and overspread so never made it into his trophy books but I love it. It’s big, heavy, and got tons of character. You’ll struggle to find a wild shot one that’ll match it for sheer size alone.
Kudos goes to a mate at the time who put me into the general area and gave me the shot. He had spotted it previously when out hunting with a relative who botched up his chance. We went back in after the Easter weekend and got onto it. It was wet and murky and he was roaring up a storm, made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Went in quietly and finally got eyes on him. Got the cross hairs on as he was walking directly away but couldn’t get a shot as all I could see from about 100m away was a set of white points either side with a tree dead centre. I’m standing there, holding on him but can’t take the shot!!! Thankfully, it’s not my first rodeo, quickly scanned ahead of him and spotted a small gut veering to the right and started praying, swing to the right, swing to the right… He did and I took the shot. The rest is history as they say.
Bookmarks