I just finished my hunt with Peter at Kiwi Wilderness Safaris. When I left for New Zealand I knew the weather was saying that most of the time I would be there was about 80% chances of rain.
The four day I was there to hunt it rained all the time.
Now the hunt. I had every thing I owned to keep me dry. Peter made every effort to make my hunt a success. The first day we heard some roaring but didn't see any red stags. Day two would have been perfect if we were hunting for Fallow Deer. I watched a gold level one for about an hour as we were watching two sides of a valley. Animals were moving everywhere except Red Stags.
Later in the afternoon we had moved to a different location in the rain and several hinds came out of a stand of trees followed by a stag. He followed the hinds around roared a couple times but he was smaller than I was looking for so we just watched him as long as he was there and then headed in for the night.
Day three started off the same with rain. We headed up to a different spot and since it was just misting we started down a ridge looking at both sides for red deer. Several hinds came out of the brush and crossed over the top in front of us. We stopped to look for stags below us or across on the other side of the valley we were above.
Peter was looking down our side so I looked down the ridge in front of us and a great looking Stag came up on the top and started walking away from us. I tapped Peter and said "is that a good one?" and he said that is a monster. He was at the end of the ridge and instead of going down away from us he turned and started down the side we were looking at. Peter put shooting sticks up in front of me as we were sitting on the ground and said take a shot. The stag had stopped but was facing away from us. I told Peter that all I had was its butt and he said take a shot.
In the excitement we didn't range anything and my shot ended up about a foot down from where I was aiming. The stag stayed on our side and just went several feet down the hill and stopped so I took another shot but didn't seem to hit anything. The stag started to go down the hill kind of fast but stopped again just before going over an edge in the middle of our side of the valley. Another shot but know hit. The stag went out of sight. We got up and started down the hill below us to get past the bushes that were cutting off our view. That took some time but when I got past the brush I was looking over to the side the stag had been on and couldn't see anything. I heard Peter say there he is, so I said where and he said going up the other side. We sat down and I got the sticks again.
On the way down the hill Peter saw I had the gloves that I use during archer season on and said I should take them off they might be messing up my shooting.
The Stag stopped about 50 feet up the other side. I had Peter crank up the power on my scope as I had the stag in it. He said put the cross hairs on it back and that is where I was so I sent another shot go. The gloves might have been the problem since I nailed him and he tumbled about half the way down the hill into some of the larger bushes.
I could tell that his head was still moving around so thought I must have spined him.
We moved down the hill to a closer distance and then Peter went the rest of the way as I stayed there in case the stag got back up.
When he got to the stag he called to me to come down. We could tell the only part of the stag that was still moving was the head. His lower half was dead. I put in a lung shot and we let him die.
We pulled him out of the bush he ended up in and I saw how great a Red Stag that I had just got for a trophy was.
We pulled him down through the bushes he was stuck in and took pictures.
Here is one of the pictures of me and the Red Stag.
View attachment 178910
More later.
Tom
