So myself and Stu71 (and he needs to win this prize) went somewhere up North Canterbury Easter weekend.
Climbed up a valley to camp at bush edge, 1100m up. Day one was a gut buster, food and 5l water each for 4days nearly killed me, I was praying and crawling the last 30m. Don't mind saying I was f44k3d.
Day2 we awoke to NW winds which had battered us all night. His ultralight weight tent just survived with a bent pole. I held mine down most of the night. We ate brekky before sun up to the sweet sounds of moans and roars in the bush
No amount of coaxing would encourage anything towards us, so we went into the bush as the NW brought rain showers. By lunch they had shut up, so we went back to camp for lunch and a snooze with a repitching of the tents. The evening brought the odd moan and occassional roar from a big fella a long way down the valley.
The temp dropped that night, and we awoke to low cloud around us, with frost on the tents. And the odd moan again from that same stag across the valley. As dawn approached we climbed a bit up the ridge. Stu71 stopped on the ridge to be able to see both sides and I climbed another 200 to the top of it so as to be able to scan into the back basin. 30mins later, I was joined by a kea who took a liking to a dead beech beside me. Didn't see any deer, so stood up to head back down. I hadn't moved 10 paces when a hind broke out of the bushline 40m from me, looking surprised at me being there. She barked and pranced off back to where she came.
I dropped another 50m and sat down to radio Stu71 what I'd seen. I could see his blaze hat below me. He told me to get down quick as he thought there was a stag roaring from our camp. Anyone who knows him, will know he is a joker and coffee hound. So I was thinking this is a windup, he's just wanting a flatwhite. The next thing he says, is "gotta get off the radio, there IS a Stag in the camp!" then BOOOM echoes across the valley
So I high tailed it down. And came upon him walking up to a stag. It dropped 28m from the tents. If it had walked 6m it would have seen our tents.
He says, the thing was prancing around roaring when he came over the dip, so he whipped open the scope covers and let it fill the crosshairs. It dropped like a stone.
Now after the crafty bugger telling me "don't shoot the small ones, there should be a bigger one hiding nearby", he shot the first one he saw. A lovely symettrical shaped fella. Pity only a 9pt. Missing a trez on one side. Nice colour too.
To top it off, half an hour after deboning the hind qtr, taking fillets and back steaks, I went to the bush edge to wash up and spooked two more hinds about 3m from camp. Shit hot.
We had run out of water, so decided to descend to last water, camp there and have a look for the bush roaring big fella. Somewhere on the way down I scratched my eye (doc says the pupil has a scratch abuot 3mm long), so we decided to call it quits and walk out. Good job too, as that night after we came out, 170mm rain fell in the area and blew out the route we took home.
stag
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4q8aoeimvtt0rnf/P1000069.JPG?dl=0https://www.dropbox.com/s/p2rbo21v1dijpk4/P1000071.JPG?dl=0Stu with his full pack and head
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5gdwi5bwgl74g22/P1000082.JPG?dl=0Congrats stu on the first one. Next time, make the coffee first and give me a chance.
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Stu 71 first roar stag almost in his sleeping bag (Read 3437 times)