2009 roar what ya get!!!

[haynzy]

Ill kick this off with this

also got a spiker for the barbie
saw a total of 14 sika, 7 stags(2 8's, 2 7's a 5 the spiker and an unknown one) so all in all a good trip.

[wopass]

shit man, you on private land or something??

havent seen my rifle since last june when i did my back in... at the point now where im thinking about some easy half day walks to see how the body copes

[haynzy]

shit man, you on private land or something??

havent seen my rifle since last june when i did my back in... at the point now where im thinking about some easy half day walks to see how the body copes

yeah private land that bounders the ranges and army country, ill try put some video up of a stag that could have gone 200+ douglas score but he was missing an inner top tine

[antsarooney]

nice stag mate, guess i better get my ass out and have a look.

[Moriarty]

Well done Haynzy, never mind that I am soooo fkn jealous, I never EVER got one as good as that one. shot me more than a few too, but I woulda had that one you got mounted and hung on the wall. A trophy is in the eye of the shooter!!!!


lucky bugger being able to go out and play. Jap deer are great fun, eh?

[haynzy]

Well done Haynzy, never mind that I am soooo fkn jealous, I never EVER got one as good as that one. shot me more than a few too, but I woulda had that one you got mounted and hung on the wall. A trophy is in the eye of the shooter!!!!


lucky bugger being able to go out and play. Jap deer are great fun, eh?

I love huntin them, and im lucky to have access to that property as there a trophys everywhere, I shot 2 8's bigger than him 2 years ago and im going back in two weeks to have another crack. Taking the video camera has added a whole new dimension to my hunting

[Moriarty]

of course, shooting a good head on a farm is NOT a trophy, is it?

Jap are better eating even than Fallow. MUCH more fun to hunt too. how close can you get?

[haynzy]

of course, shooting a good head on a farm is NOT a trophy, is it?

Jap are better eating even than Fallow. MUCH more fun to hunt too. how close can you get?

They are not fenced in and come and go as they please so yep they are def trophys only difference is we dont have to compete with every trigger happy newbie that shoots everything they see without letting the herd grow, had the stag I shot had stronger top tines I would have left him to grow another year but the potential was not there so on the barbie he goes

[BrentC]

quoted from nz.general

This years ‘Roar’ hunt for big Red deer stags was off to an
inauspicious start when The Midget helped me carry my bags to the car,
as if she could not be rid of me soon enough for my planned nine days
away.

As we drove through the night, I found out that is was to actually be
ten days away, which made a mockery of the ‘intentions form’ I had
filled out for her should I be late out of the bush, and I doubt that
my midnight TXT message saying I was going in for an additional day
was met with much humour.

Then half way through the night and on a dark and windy road, I could
not shake the nagging feeling that I had not transferred my two food
and supply bins from my 4x4 to the 4x4-and-trailer we were all
travelling in, and indeed this was confirmed at 3am. I had my bin of
clothes, day-pack ready to go and my tramping pack ready to go. I had
sleeping bag(s), tent(s) and stretcher, and in that made-up tramping
pack I had only brought the dehydrated food for the four days I
intended to be away from base-camp, and had nowt for the other six
days. There is only one 24-hour service-stations open at that time
within a few hundred kilometres that I know of, and so I emptied it’s
shelves of overpriced bacon, overpriced eggs, overpriced protein-bars,
overpriced energy-bars and overpriced tins of tuna to the tune of an
overpriced $150.

At least I had remembered by new rifle on its second hunt and as yet
un-christened: a Savage chambered in .308 which I had brought after
falling out of love with my Winchester .243 after losing a deer late
last year. The .243 was always a bit light for the big Red stags we
were after on this trip, and a new love affair was blooming. One
needs confidence on ones rifle, and second-guessing and self-doubt on
the hunt are not nice companions. And readers should not scoff at
hunters forgetting rifles: I know of one person who has forgotten the
bolt or ammunition, and heard of others through the grapevine.

As dawn arrived, we approached our intended base-camp in the middle of
nowhere, we saw it was occupied by two other parties, and so Plan-B
was put into action for another part of the forest we were all
unfamiliar with, which was unoccupied by hunters but just off the main
tramping track. Because it was just off the main track, it was quite
plush by our standards with a ‘high-drop’ toilet and covered cooking
areas: we’d not be reliant on squatting over holes dug in the ground
or cooking under tarpaulins in hailstorms or snow that were not
uncommon.

As I said, a pretty poor start for a week-and-half long hunt: being
helped out of the house, getting the exit dates wrong, leaving half of
ones food behind, and having to hunt a new area with the prospect of
(disapproving) trampers coming through.

We pitched camp, and set off for a quick reconnoitre to get a feel for
the land and to stretch the legs, and heard some roaring in the
distance. On our return The Legend visited camp, and he had some
words of advice having hunted here thirty years ago. The Goat and
another decided to take The Legend’s advice for the next day, while
The Iceman and myself decided we would do a long circular trek to
better understand the area.

The next morning I breakfasted on the overpriced bacon, the overpriced
eggs, and one of the overpriced energy bars, and we set off. As we
climbed, we met another hunter coming out, which is always something I
have mixed feelings about – it is good that he is out, but bad in that
he was there or there might be others – and he told us of the roaring
deer he had heard.

Climbing further, we saw sign and spooked a fawn. Where there are
fawns there are hinds, and at this time of year where there are hinds
coming into heat there are testosterone laden aggressive stags ready
to battle each other and to mate with the hinds.

Noting that place for investigation in a few days time (after our
spooking them had faded from their memory) we travelled further,
occasionally imitating a trespassing deer in the hope of infuriating a
resident stag but only eliciting distant roars which were noted as we
moved on. We then began our decent and return to base-camp.
And then we had a response: from 75 metres to my left a stag groaned
back at us. The Iceman had the roaring horn which this stag had
responded to, so he gave him another of his mangled groans which to me
sound like a vomiting drunkard on benefit day.

We had an hour of light left, with the wind behind us as the stag to
our left, his next groan came from slightly further away and slightly
down wind, and so we made quiet haste so as to not let him get
downwind from us. His next roar was from further away, and so we
turned towards him and headed deep into the bush. We might run out of
light but we decided to take him on.

Both the stag and us (imitating another stag) were in difficult
position: to keep the wind advantage we had to sacrifice the height
advantage that a stag likes when confronting another stag. However,
in imitating a precocious and naive younger stag we decided we could
play our role better by taking the low ground, but we could not afford
to lose the scent and wind advantage. We literally ran down the hill
and then across a level area.

We’d run as one: crashing through the bush using four legs, both
stopping when one stopped. We’d clamber over trees and try to not
curse out load when we were caught up in ‘bush-lawyer’ or wind-fall.
We’d roar over the top of this resident stag like the upstart we were
pretending to be, annoying him.

And yet he kept retreating from this broken ground into his territory.

Soon we encountered the consequences of taking the low ground: a gully
that would slow us. If he advanced on us as we climbed out of it, we
would not be able to take a shot, and if we went one at a time then
our sound pattern would change and we’d take too long. A roar was
given and he immediately replied from further away, as he now tried to
get downwind of us, but this gave us the knowledge that we could
tackle the gully before he could close if he decided to.

We threw ourselves into the gully and scrambled up the other side,
with the only attempts to minimise sound being on those like foreign
sounds like our voices, kicking things, or rifle stocks scraping on
foliage. Challenging deer are not subtle, and nether were we. As
soon as we broached the hill we looked without luck and then roared
back at him. His response was from about fifty metres away but still
well out of sight.

If we got a shot at him, it would be close up and probably a quick
shot. Any movement of ours would be seen and immediately register as
non-deer and he would flee meaning we’d be shooting at a moving target
which I personally don’t like doing with a large calibre centre-fire
round. Rounds were silently chambered and scopes checked to ensure
they were on minimum magnification for this close-in bush-hunting.

We advanced again, taking advantage of the cover, but now we were out
of the gullies and onto some bush-covered flats. There was more sign
about and we knew he’d either stand on this even ground here against
this upstart we were pretending to be, or he’s scent us and flee.
With chambered rounds we had safety catches were on or bolts half-
closed.

Ahead was a fallen log, to which we moved at pace and with moderate
noise – when stags are bearing up for a fight subtlety is not called
for – and called again.

We were right: he had the home ground advantage now and was coming in
to take on this pretentious up-start, to fight us if need be and
probably clash antlered heads. He replied from thirty metres away as
I leant over the fallen log with my thumb on the safety catch and The
Iceman was standing a few feet on my left using an upright tree to
break up his shape.

Frozen solid we waited. Would he come out? Would he see us move from
behind his own cover and would the game be up? Would the gentle
breeze we contended with be fickle and change, blowing the scent of
man onto him?

And then he advanced to deal with this interloper, and we saw him step
out from behind is own fallen log. I don’t know why I had not seen
his antlers above the log previously, for maybe they blended or were
obscured by another tree, but there he was standing fully in view
about thirty metres in front of me presenting a three-quarter
profile.

Simultaneously I silently slipped the safety catch with my right thumb
and placed the cross-hairs fair-square on his left shoulder, and
squeezed the trigger.

Like all my firearms, my new Savage .308 is magical. Whenever there
is food in the sights they give no recoil I notice and make no
noticeable noise. The stag’s head went down and the trees all shook
as 150 grains of copper-jacketed-lead streaked into him at about 2750
feet-per-second. As The Iceman would later say:

“Our roaring sucks, and this deer was probably wondering what all the
awful commotion was. He was probably laughing himself silly, “eh,
man, what you think you doing? You are being ridiculous!” and he
finally decided to see what idiot was making such pathetic roaring.
He sticks his head around the corner then “Boom!” “Oooh, you bastard”
he says, “what you’d have to go and do that for?””

The stag turned and tried to flee, before dropping to ground mortally
wounded. We got to him quickly, and a mercy shot was not necessary.

It was almost dark now, and we gutted him under torchlight and hung
him in a tree for retrieval the next day, and tagged his location on
our GPS’s.

We finally re-found a track that would take us back to camp and got
back there at 10pm. Coming back into camp, bloodied and with his head
in my hand, The Goat and his hunting companion knew what had happened
as they had heard the shot. They too had encountered a stag along
with some hinds, but had fluffed the chance of a shot.

We retold the story to them and I was teased about not needing to
worry about food now. The next day I took my empty pack back up
there up while The Iceman rested his old bones, and I butchered the
deer for all his meat save the blood-shot shattered shoulder which
would not keep. I took his back-steaks and hind quarters, his neck
and other front leg, along with his ‘body’ meat and of course the eye-
fillets. It is important to me to take all the meat I possibly can
from what I shoot, even if it means multiple trips, because to do
otherwise is to insult the animal I have just killed.

It was a very hot, heavy, and long walk back, laden under all this
meat and negotiating uneven terrain. My weightlifting and
powerlifting history means I am more capable of this carrying than
most people are or my pack was, which broke a shoulder and seam strap
under the strain, and I was very relieved to see the campsite come
into view. His meat was hung in the cool shade and so I now would not
go hungry.

That night we dined on eye-fillet and back-steaks, and for the rest of
the week I ate venison at least once a day, often twice and on one wet
and windy day, thrice. As the weather turned foul and then warm, the
stags went quiet and there was no more successes, with just
information gleaned for my return there this time next year.

The Goat never got that stag he encountered on the same day I got
mine, and we could only laugh for so long about the foreign trampers
who arrived at our base-camp late one night and put their tent up
inside-out to awake wet and cold, or the trampers from another foreign
country who decided jeans and sneakers were appropriate tramping gear
in this country’s bush but would not talk with orange-clad men
wielding firearms, so we fed the former hot food and shrugged over the
latter and came home to our families a day early than planned, which
was the day I had originally thought we were coming home anyway.

And what was the best part of the hunt? Sure, the stag was great, but
not as much as seeing The Spawn: the eldest of whom earnestly declared
that the stag’s head from this trip to be hung above The Eldest
Spawn's bed (much to The Midget's horror and disgust).

And all the overpriced tins of tuna and overpriced protein bars I
brought? I’ll save them for opening weekend on the ducks in a few
weeks time.

[Sadam_Husain]

I seen on one of the other threads someone scored this west coast trophy.... not quite sure how it measures up on the douglas score though

[haynzy]

I seen on one of the other threads someone scored this west coast trophy.... not quite sure how it measures up on the douglas score though

looks pretty even to me should get the bastard shoulder mounted

[hillfilly]

[91Rangie]

Went for a hunt on Friday with Gonfellon from here and he shot thease two a 9 and a 12 had the local kids running and screaming as we drove through Shannon







Then went back Saturday and I shot this 10

[Heath]

I seen on one of the other threads someone scored this west coast trophy.... not quite sure how it measures up on the douglas score though

Thats what happens when you use a high calibre rife to shoot suzukis. The hydraulic shock destroys the carcass and all you have left is the front bumper.

[rxsmiddy]

went for a week on the coast, pissed rain, there was a moat around the hut, the guys camping about 1km away from us got flooded twice (serves them right for camping near a hut). Stags didnt really stasrt roaring during the night untill the last 2 nights, and then decided to start roaring the ####### day i walked out! to bad i was out of time, but ill be back next year with more time on my hands