There’s no one I like hunting with more than my wife.
That’s exactly how the last story started, and nothing has changed. And thank the gods for that.
It’s been a rough year - easily the shittiest year we’ve had together in 25. We’ve had 12 months of work / health & fitness / family / livestock / neighbourhood / weather problems, with injuries, deaths, illness, parasites, record breaking rain, and post-pandemic economic woes all turning up at pretty much the same time. There really were times this past year when I held my wife and contemplated not letting go in case something bad happened. Every phone call, email or text seemed to herald another set of problems. But that’s life - shite happens and no one lives forever. In middle age one must expect to start losing colleagues, friends and family. Some expected losses, some most definitely not.
Death, war, inflation, pestilence. Bollocks to 2022.
So we went hunting over New Year, just the two of us. We left boys and dogs at home with a warning - do not burn the house down and under no circumstances let those Staffies anywhere near the chook house.
On the drive down to the hunting block, the water-in-fuel alarm went off on the Hilux’s Fuel Manager pre-filter. Not a good start. In the now blazing ozone-free summer sun we set about draining the filter and inspecting the tank’s contents by draining some into a bucket in the Taumarunui supermarket carpark. Nothing like a dose of bad (and very expensive) diesel to really get right up my nose. Put the price up by >60% and add water and shite. Thanks a lot.
Consequently we were much later arriving at the farm than planned. To add to the journey’s woes we discovered the ford was impassable due to a slip, erosion and treefall, necessitating two hours of fukking around with the winch and spade, in the aforementioned blazing hot ozone-free sun. I hadn’t brought a chainsaw… No wife, we won’t need it, I had very unwisely stated during the packing stage (and was now being reminded about every couple of minutes). Eventually we got both quad and Hilux across to the other side of the river and up to the cabin. The last 700m of the 345km journey is always the most exciting.
At the cabin, the grass was testicle height, spiders, rats and mice had invaded, the fridge was mouldy and we both realised we’d caught the sun badly enough to hurt. Two choices were available: get drunk and pogo to Amyl & The Sniffers, or head up into the hills. Wife wasn’t so keen on the former so it was come on husband, lets go look for a deer.
Only one rifle was zeroed, the Tikka .308, so we grabbed the hunting pack and some ammo and hopped on our trusty 25 yr old Honda for a hot & humid air-cooled haul up into the backcountry. The bog holes were potentially going to be quite bad after so much rain, so it was prudent to take a smaller bike we can literally lift out of trouble if needs be, plus it has a winch. We had about 90 minutes of shooting light on the tops before what we both felt like doing… drinking flagons of brown ale. And pogoing. That could wait.
We parked up on the saddle and slowly walked through the native forest onto a bench that looks out over the adjacent watershed. I’ve posted numerous photos of this place on here before, it is my nirvana, my Earth HQ. The temperature was falling and I was sure animals would be on the move. Seeing one wouldn’t be a problem, but seeing one that was shootable and recoverable was a different proposition - neither of us felt like an hours long recovery in the dark on a 1:2 gradient slope thanks very much. We walked south, stopping every 30m or so to glass down into the valley below. As I turned to move on, there was that familiar whispher-yelp of my wife spotting a large red deer.
THERE!
And there it most certainly was. A fat as red stag, big bodied, feeding into a small clearing in the scrub. Minor problem though, his direction of feeding would shortly take him above a large slip, bare rock exposed for 70m+ sub-vertically down into the valley floor - if he fell down that he was unrecoverable. Therefore, I had to be real fast. We hit the deck and I yanked the rangefinder out of my breast pocket - 196m, perfect, almost bang-on the rifle’s zero range. We slithered over to the edge of the bench and found a clear line of sight with no vegetation in the way. The shot angle was steeply down, about -30°. I set the zoom on the Trijicon to 10x, opened the spiked bipod and shouldered the rifle. The illuminated dot easily found the stag’s shoulder and the DPT chassis felt nice and snug, no wobble. Just as the stag approached the point of no return… BANG! It’s amazing how fast it all happens when you’re shooting on instinct with gear you know and trust… The stag fell hard onto its brisket and scrabbled to try and stand as it slid downwards. The scrabbling slowed him down and thankfully there was enough scrub to stop gravity taking over, and he rolled away from the slip before coming to rest against a manuka tree, chestnut brown back glowing in the low sunlight. A few death quivers and it was all over. Dead as.
We made some mental notes on his position. Experience told us it was going to be hard to get to the beast, due to the gradient and scrub we wouldn’t be able to see it until practically on top of it. You have to be so, so careful, it’s that steep that one slip and your in proper bother, all too easy to break an arm or leg. (That’s why we wear Lowa and Mendl boots - you really need the support.) Hopefully we’d have just enough time to cut him up and get back to the bike before it got dark if all went to plan.
Of course it didn’t go to plan, we screwed it up by going down the wrong spur - one too far over - and having to backtrack. At this time of the year, summer velvet stags haven’t started to cover themselves with Eau de Stag and they hardly smell at all, plus all the rain has been washing them daily, so using scent to help find them is a non-starter (in the Roar if you get downwind you can find them with your nose alone). The wife had to go back up to the bench to guide me onto the animal, without her spotting I’d never have found him.
A big, handsome, fat as summer velvet stag. Really a beautiful animal. The 165gr Speer BTSP was on the money and had punched through the hilar and out the other side, leaving a neat mushroom sized hole that was gushing blood. It’s absolutely the best time to kill red stags for meat - they have been on quality spring & early summer feed with no pressure and man don’t they just show it. Wife came back down the spur; thanks to her crossfit training she’s fit as and way more so than me these days. She turns 50 next year and beats women half her age in the comps at the gym. Great hunting companion!
We set about cutting up the beast, taking all the prime cuts and bagging them in dry bags and straight into the packs. No need spend time cooling the meat in the trees, (a) due to the blowflies and (b) it will be in a 80L Engel fridge in about an hour. Once the job was done, we slogged it back up the hill and onto the bench and into the forest. By the time we got to the bike it was pitch black. We were sweaty as, and both polished off another litre each of cool spring water.
As we wound down the track to the cabin, mobs of cheeky pigs scattered in the wide beam of the quad’s LED lights, begging to be shot. (Nothing like good lights, it’s well worth replacing the old ones with what’s available now.) But nah, we let the piggies go. We’ll go get them another day. There was only one thing on our minds - brown ale and crisps. And once we’d packed the meat into the fridge, that’s exactly what we cracked open, sitting under the stars on a warm summer evening, satisfyingly tired and sweaty, all the irritations of the day and preceding months forgotten.
That’s exactly how the last story started, and nothing has changed. And thank the gods for that.
It’s been a rough year - easily the shittiest year we’ve had together in 25. We’ve had 12 months of work / health & fitness / family / livestock / neighbourhood / weather problems, with injuries, deaths, illness, parasites, record breaking rain, and post-pandemic economic woes all turning up at pretty much the same time. There really were times this past year when I held my wife and contemplated not letting go in case something bad happened. Every phone call, email or text seemed to herald another set of problems. But that’s life - shite happens and no one lives forever. In middle age one must expect to start losing colleagues, friends and family. Some expected losses, some most definitely not.
Death, war, inflation, pestilence. Bollocks to 2022.
So we went hunting over New Year, just the two of us. We left boys and dogs at home with a warning - do not burn the house down and under no circumstances let those Staffies anywhere near the chook house.
On the drive down to the hunting block, the water-in-fuel alarm went off on the Hilux’s Fuel Manager pre-filter. Not a good start. In the now blazing ozone-free summer sun we set about draining the filter and inspecting the tank’s contents by draining some into a bucket in the Taumarunui supermarket carpark. Nothing like a dose of bad (and very expensive) diesel to really get right up my nose. Put the price up by >60% and add water and shite. Thanks a lot.
Consequently we were much later arriving at the farm than planned. To add to the journey’s woes we discovered the ford was impassable due to a slip, erosion and treefall, necessitating two hours of fukking around with the winch and spade, in the aforementioned blazing hot ozone-free sun. I hadn’t brought a chainsaw… No wife, we won’t need it, I had very unwisely stated during the packing stage (and was now being reminded about every couple of minutes). Eventually we got both quad and Hilux across to the other side of the river and up to the cabin. The last 700m of the 345km journey is always the most exciting.
At the cabin, the grass was testicle height, spiders, rats and mice had invaded, the fridge was mouldy and we both realised we’d caught the sun badly enough to hurt. Two choices were available: get drunk and pogo to Amyl & The Sniffers, or head up into the hills. Wife wasn’t so keen on the former so it was come on husband, lets go look for a deer.
Only one rifle was zeroed, the Tikka .308, so we grabbed the hunting pack and some ammo and hopped on our trusty 25 yr old Honda for a hot & humid air-cooled haul up into the backcountry. The bog holes were potentially going to be quite bad after so much rain, so it was prudent to take a smaller bike we can literally lift out of trouble if needs be, plus it has a winch. We had about 90 minutes of shooting light on the tops before what we both felt like doing… drinking flagons of brown ale. And pogoing. That could wait.
We parked up on the saddle and slowly walked through the native forest onto a bench that looks out over the adjacent watershed. I’ve posted numerous photos of this place on here before, it is my nirvana, my Earth HQ. The temperature was falling and I was sure animals would be on the move. Seeing one wouldn’t be a problem, but seeing one that was shootable and recoverable was a different proposition - neither of us felt like an hours long recovery in the dark on a 1:2 gradient slope thanks very much. We walked south, stopping every 30m or so to glass down into the valley below. As I turned to move on, there was that familiar whispher-yelp of my wife spotting a large red deer.
THERE!
And there it most certainly was. A fat as red stag, big bodied, feeding into a small clearing in the scrub. Minor problem though, his direction of feeding would shortly take him above a large slip, bare rock exposed for 70m+ sub-vertically down into the valley floor - if he fell down that he was unrecoverable. Therefore, I had to be real fast. We hit the deck and I yanked the rangefinder out of my breast pocket - 196m, perfect, almost bang-on the rifle’s zero range. We slithered over to the edge of the bench and found a clear line of sight with no vegetation in the way. The shot angle was steeply down, about -30°. I set the zoom on the Trijicon to 10x, opened the spiked bipod and shouldered the rifle. The illuminated dot easily found the stag’s shoulder and the DPT chassis felt nice and snug, no wobble. Just as the stag approached the point of no return… BANG! It’s amazing how fast it all happens when you’re shooting on instinct with gear you know and trust… The stag fell hard onto its brisket and scrabbled to try and stand as it slid downwards. The scrabbling slowed him down and thankfully there was enough scrub to stop gravity taking over, and he rolled away from the slip before coming to rest against a manuka tree, chestnut brown back glowing in the low sunlight. A few death quivers and it was all over. Dead as.
We made some mental notes on his position. Experience told us it was going to be hard to get to the beast, due to the gradient and scrub we wouldn’t be able to see it until practically on top of it. You have to be so, so careful, it’s that steep that one slip and your in proper bother, all too easy to break an arm or leg. (That’s why we wear Lowa and Mendl boots - you really need the support.) Hopefully we’d have just enough time to cut him up and get back to the bike before it got dark if all went to plan.
Of course it didn’t go to plan, we screwed it up by going down the wrong spur - one too far over - and having to backtrack. At this time of the year, summer velvet stags haven’t started to cover themselves with Eau de Stag and they hardly smell at all, plus all the rain has been washing them daily, so using scent to help find them is a non-starter (in the Roar if you get downwind you can find them with your nose alone). The wife had to go back up to the bench to guide me onto the animal, without her spotting I’d never have found him.
A big, handsome, fat as summer velvet stag. Really a beautiful animal. The 165gr Speer BTSP was on the money and had punched through the hilar and out the other side, leaving a neat mushroom sized hole that was gushing blood. It’s absolutely the best time to kill red stags for meat - they have been on quality spring & early summer feed with no pressure and man don’t they just show it. Wife came back down the spur; thanks to her crossfit training she’s fit as and way more so than me these days. She turns 50 next year and beats women half her age in the comps at the gym. Great hunting companion!
We set about cutting up the beast, taking all the prime cuts and bagging them in dry bags and straight into the packs. No need spend time cooling the meat in the trees, (a) due to the blowflies and (b) it will be in a 80L Engel fridge in about an hour. Once the job was done, we slogged it back up the hill and onto the bench and into the forest. By the time we got to the bike it was pitch black. We were sweaty as, and both polished off another litre each of cool spring water.
As we wound down the track to the cabin, mobs of cheeky pigs scattered in the wide beam of the quad’s LED lights, begging to be shot. (Nothing like good lights, it’s well worth replacing the old ones with what’s available now.) But nah, we let the piggies go. We’ll go get them another day. There was only one thing on our minds - brown ale and crisps. And once we’d packed the meat into the fridge, that’s exactly what we cracked open, sitting under the stars on a warm summer evening, satisfyingly tired and sweaty, all the irritations of the day and preceding months forgotten.
… 
dragging hire that is .. not many wimen out there that like getting tore in and doing the complete job 
, I really fancy some big Brownies from NZ, maybe one day 
