By Wayne Chapman

March 29, 2014

I worked with Mountain Hunters NZ to put together guided packages for our customers.

These were for stag hunts during the roar (Rut to Americans) on a free range area on our east coast. The red deer are descended from Windsor stock, and get huge.

A number of our customers took up the special offer from Brent of Mountain Hunters, and as luck would have it he had a small window of opportunity for me to have a hunt at the very start of the roar.
The weather was terrible, with tropical cyclone Lusi moving through, which resulted in a day of rain, wind and low cloud making hunting hard, although we did see a number of stags but nothing of any real quality.
The next morning saw the wind still blowing but the sky was clear, and after a hard climb we were on a hill top glassing the surrounding basins.

We saw a number of quality stags, and spyed a really good 11 pointer. A stalk around the top of a basin brought us 125m from where he was but we couldn't see him. However a very nice 10 pointer was with him and the decision was made to take him.

With a rest from a pack, one well placed 150grn SST from my 30-06 I dropped him on the spot, a really nice representative NZ red stag head and something worthy of the efforts to get there.