2012 Pre-Roar hunt

[misanthropic_curmudgeon]

We knew the deer weren’t roaring yet, but the plan was to get in and
‘team-hunt’ an area we knew of for one of the lads who would be in
there during the roar-proper: we’d all go in, head off in different
directions, and have a look around for him, reporting back on what we
found sign-wise. Me, I was hunting the roar elsewhere. Sure, if a
deer revealed itself to one of us we’d knock it over, but the primary
function was reconnaissance for him.

A secondary function of this trip was to take one of the guy’s kids in
for look around, to spend a few days and nights in the bush, and to
give the kid a first-hand taste of where dad disappears to every
couple of weeks. It was a benign forecast and a perfect opportunity
to do so.

The father and kid and I drove down on Friday night, to meet the guy
who had been in there for a couple days already, and we arrived
reasonably late: too late for a kid to walk-in in the dark, so we
hatched a plan of who would go/do what the following day, and the
father and kid camped at the road-end while I walked in under
headlamp.

Several kilometres in, and I hear a crashing through the scrub/track
ahead of me, and I freeze. Then I see movement. Then I see the other
guy legging it at pace towards me, with his arms covered in blood.

What the ??? Why is he heading out of the bush, covered in blood? My
mind races: bugger, something has happened? He’s going for help?
What’s wrong? Who got shot? Who else was in there to get shot? Was it
his blood?

With much relief on my part, he said that he’d shot two deer and did
not have enough rope to hang them both up, so was coming out to his
car or our rope, whichever he encountered first. It was deer blood
that he’d not cleaned off.

With a huge and barely suppressed sigh of relief, he turns and we head
back in. We get to our campsite, drop my pack and head over to where
he’d shot two deer on this quasi-recon trip. Together we drag them to
a decent tree, and get them up it before returning to camp and
belatedly retiring for the night: there’s a certain pleasure and
frustration at settling in for a few hours sleep after dealing with
deer before your hunt has even started!

He said he was sitting down having a breather before heading back for
the night, when a hind just steps out in front of him, perhaps forty
or fifty meters away. And then a spiker. And then a third deer.

So what’s a man to do? As he retold to me, his hand inched towards
his rifle on the ground beside him, freezing every time a deer raised
its head. Daring not to even blink. Now with his hand on his gun,
slowly he pulls it to him, and into his lap. He chambers a round,
painfully aware of the potential metallic noise of bolt-on-bullet-on-
barrel to send the deer bolting for cover. Trying to slow a racing
heart. With a round chambered and safety off, the rifle is brought to
the shoulder, again freezing every time a deer raises its head or
sniff the breeze. He lines up on the first deer half expecting to
blow it at any moment, and squeezes the trigger.

With one deer on the ground, there was pandemonium amongst the others
who don’t know what on earth is happening. They’re running in all
directions, unsure of the source of the explosion. Right about now he
is really glad he hunts with a suppressor on his rifle, as indeed we
all do. Suppressors have several benefits which far outweigh the
additional weight. They reduce recoil, which is nice, but for most
(and me) the biggest advantage is the reduction in the noise of the
rapid combustion of the gunpowder, also known as the explosion. You
still get the supersonic crack, and you sure as hell know the gun has
gone off, but with a ! suppressor you’re not left with ringing ears,
hearing damage, and on your knees clutching your head and thinking it
hasn’t been this bad since you got lagered up as a 16-year-old and
your father mad you mow the lawns at 6am the next day as punishment.
Maybe we’re all soft JAFA’s now, but we are all converts to
suppressors.

But an added advantage to the suppressor is that it makes it very hard
for the deer to know where the shot come from, so they don’t know
where to run away from. And so my mate was confronted with deer
milling about in front of him, he did the only natural thing to do: he
(slowly, quietly) re-loaded and lined up on a second deer, and let
that one have it, too.
After a second dose of noise and flopping-down mate, the last
remaining deer appeared to decide that ‘anywhere’ is better than
‘here’, and exited, which was the cue for my mate to get his knife
out, gut them out, and discover he needed more rope.

And my cue for the following day, after helping him, to be faced with
the same dilemma.

After the previous nights experience, getting two deer up a tree that
my mate had shot as he headed back to camp, I slept fitfully and
briefly, before I was up and away the next day. My mate would be off
that day, as he had family obligations back in Auckland for the
weekend, and my other mate and his kid were coming in: like yesterday,
there’d be a meeting on the track, but this time he’d have washed the
blood from his arms!

I made a beeline to an area which looked promising, further away than
we’d normally get to, and soon encountered sign. Some rubs were
tagged on the GPS for passing on to my mate, as well some significant
geographic features and landmarks should he need them walking about in
the dark during the roar when he was in here alone.

And then my dilemma confronts me around midday or so: a young hind
that had been laying down digesting its lunch amongst the crown fern
popped up directly in front of me, maybe fifteen meters away. Up
comes the rifle. Normally I’d probably leave this: it’s not what I’m
here for, but this is the proverbial gift horse, and it almost seems
rude not to. So I lined up on its head, and pretty-much blew it off.

After gutting and getting it up a tree to cool, I carry on checking
out the creeks and surrounds, mooching around here and there, getting
the lay of the land. Not really in the mood to come back here the
next day to retrieve the young hind – especially as there were already
two other deer hanging up which would need to be carried out – I
decided to retrace my steps, butcher it, bag it, and take it with me
on the return trip.
Shouldering my load, I started walking back, well aware that it would
be well-dark by my return. And then I see him.

A stag, just standing there, looking at me. Giving me the eye. Was
he watching me butcher out that young hind?!?! I can clearly see the
top two inches of neck, his head and ears, and brow tines through a
gap in the bush. I can’t see anything else: no tops to be seen, no
back or legs to see which was he is facing: just a disembodied head in
the bush.

The irony of the previous head-shot young hind in full view, and now
this disembodied stags head looming up out of the bush at me is not
lost as I line up on it is not lost on me, but there is a problem and
that is the range. He’s the best part of fifty meters away, and the
cross-hairs are drifting over and around his face, and I don’t like
taking shots I’m not sure of. I see his ears twitch and his head turn
profile just as I stabilise the cross-hairs, but I really don’t want
to foul this up and just take off his jaw, which is an unfortunate
possibility of a messed up profiled head shot and why I don’t normally
take them unless I’m sure of myself – and a teetering free-standing
shot at 50 meters at a head is certainly ‘not sure of myself’. Just
as he returns to presenting front-on, the cross-hairs drift off his
face again, so I drop them, searching for some chest or neck, but
still to no avail.

Up to his face again, and I’m doubting myself: I could just give him
one and hope for the best, as a face-on shot with a 308 would either
hit him and kill him cold or miss and scare him witless. In hindsight
I think I was about to squeeze the trigger when he bolted to my left,
but there is one thing that I’m sure of that that is that I need to
spend more time at the range practicing my standing shooting at 50
meters, because that stag should really have been knocked over. Other
hunters could and would have, but I can’t let that worry me, and I was
not about to punch a round through the bush as a lottery shot at where
I hoped his chest might be. Besides, there is always another chance
as I’ll pass these GPS coordina! tes on to my mate, and he can come
back here in a few weeks and see if he can roar this stag up and get a
better shot at him.

So I trudged back to camp, happy that I knocked something over, but
tinged with regret about the stag, even though I have his (GPS)
number. Back at camp I shared the tale, and found out that the two
deer from the previous night have been butchered by the father and his
kid, and it looked like the next day was going to be a hard carry out.

Sure enough, the morning was fine and warm, and with a pack full of
meat I headed back to the car under load as the day warmed upon me. A
hundred meters short of the car, I dumped the meat just off the track
and in the shade, and headed back in for the rest of it and my own
kit, while the father came out with his kid and the balance of the
meat. We loaded up, and drove home, tired, but pleased in the
knowledge that we’d be depriving the supermarket of a portion of our
wages for a few more weeks yet.