Innholdsfortegnelse for No 49 Oct-Nov 2015 i NZ Hunter

The following year we returned to the same area hoping to shoot something even more worthy of hanging on the living room wall. I focused my attention on the creek I had hunted the previous year hoping I’d have similar luck. The first morning three chamois materialised on a scrubby face next to the creek. Not wanting to spook the animals by moving closer I wound my scope up to 20 power to try and determine if any of them were what I was looking for. One of the chamois was an absolute ripper and had to be well over ten inches. I didn’t have a rangefinder with me so I wasn’t willing to pull the trigger from my current position, so I took a few distant photos. There was…

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But there was still one school day to go. Ten o’clock became 12 o’clock and finally 3 o’clock and I grabbed my bag, sprinted out the gate and gave Dad a big thumbs up. After saying our goodbyes, we hauled the packs onto the truck and double checked that we weren’t missing anything. We left for (sorry can’t tell you where) with beaming smiles across our faces. We reached our destination by 12:30am at night and Dad turned off the truck and woke me out of a deep sleep. We pulled out our bed rolls and laid them across pine cones, sticks and dried cow poo. I lay there under the stars wondering what tomorrow would bring. I woke up with a sandfly biting my lip and an irritating pine…

Foreword: A sequence of events and research led me to write this. I spoke to a hunter who shot a person dead. He thought it could never happen to him, just like we all do. He made a tragic and all too simple mistake. It could happen to any of us; if we don’t live our lives on the couch, that is. We all accept that some element of risk is at the very heart of a life well lived. Read this; then get your eyesight checked. He strained his eyesight – wanting to see something, across the small gut separating him from the source. Nothing. He sat and waited, knowing it must eventually move again. Patience. After ages, he heard a slight noise. He spotted something. It…

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I had resigned from my job the day before and had 6 weeks to kill before a new job in Auckland started. Mitch, Carl and Ant and myself stuffed the Hilux Surf with a months worth of gear and set off from New Plymouth en route to the ferry terminal. We travelled overnight and ended up pitching our tents in Omarama. The next day we travelled to our spot on public DoC land to begin the 6 hour walk in. Far from boring, the tramp in was extremely exciting, with three stags heard roaring and no less than 10 hinds spotted, and we weren’t even near the good part yet! We ended up staying a night above this hotspot, and whilst there were plenty of deer we only saw a…

We wrote an in-depth article about them back in issue 42 over a year ago, outlining the other options and why BDCs work so well in the general hunting situation. We won’t go back over all the reasoning as that was laid out clearly in that article, suffice to say we have converted all our own general hunting rifles over to BDCs. Since then a large number of hunters have also realised the advantages of this system, and have been going down the BDC route. In some cases this means buying a new scope unless the one you have has the ability to have a BDC custom dial or turret retro fitted. What has also happened in the last year is there has been a lot of confusion over how…

It seems crazy we thought like that, but perhaps it was all about how tough we thought we were. But why wouldn’t you want to go lighter? PART I Here’s my two cents worth on things I’ve learned from the journey to going lighter with my style of hunting. Firstly, I’d like to give some background to why I talk about this as a “journey” and some of the history behind the ‘ultralight’ movement in outdoor adventures. Then I’ll outline my preferred style of hunting and why it’s a joy to ‘go light’ along with some of the many advantages. Finally, some options you might look into, particularly with the big three ‘heavies’ – pack, sleeping system and shelter. And, I’d like to bust a few myths along the way.…

I felt like my arms were about to fall off and it seemed as if Mother Nature was making me pay for our chosen view from the hut sight. The heat haze shimmered off everything on this sweltering day and the temperature nudged 30 degrees with very little breeze! I jumped from my daydream in the heat, as my attention focused back to the job at hand of digging blistering post holes for our hut foundations. Having driven in convoy the day before, towing an overloaded trailer up and over the Gentle Annie, I stressed that my old ute would over heat! I arrived at the Station where a generous hay contractor unloaded our small mountain of gear with his tractor. Things just kept falling into place. After a restless…

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01 Grisport MOSSBURN Product Code: GR10606 Lifestyle lightweight, lace up trail ankle boot. Benefits: Ergonomic foot pattern design for a great comfortable. Upper: Leather upper, Cordura panels, comfort lining Sole: PU Hiking Mono maximum flexibility Lining: Gri-tex water resistant membrane for dryer warmer feet Style sizing: Euro 36--47 UK 1-12 Distributed by Footwear & Apparel NZ Ltd 02 Spypoint Wireless Detection System WRL kit – Driveway Alert and/or Approaching Game system. The SPYPOINT WRL kit is a wireless motion detection system that contains a pager and a motion detector (WRL-B). When triggered, a wireless signal is transmitted to the pager. A vibration and a LED light can identify which detector has been triggered (up to four detectors WRL-B can be combined to a pager). The SPYPOINT WRL kit is primarily…

After a brief call to my mate Willis, we went over the upcoming forecast which was looking pretty good. After sorting a few other details the trip was all go. This is an annual event in our hunting calendar and being late November it’s an easier time of year to pick up a bull tahr or chamois buck feeding lower down in the creeks and slips. Willis had a goal of scoring an elusive ten inch buck and mine was a respectable bull tahr 13 inches or bigger. Friday morning was an early start driving down the rugged West Coast progressing to a solid slog in toward the mountains. The hike in was a promising sign for the trip ahead, as we saw chamois, deer and tahr, setting our expectations…

There is nothing worse than heading in on a big trip expecting stags to still be in hard antler, and finding that the trophy of your dreams has dropped its antlers the week before you found him! So what causes the stag’s antlers to cast or drop off anyway? A drop in the male hormone testosterone caused by a longer photoperiod (longer daylight hours going from winter to spring) triggers specialised cells called osteoclasts to activate. These eat away at the bone at the base of an antler until gravity or a knock causes them to drop off. From start to finish this process only takes a week, with both antlers casting usually within a day of each other. THEY WILL OFTEN BE IN THE COMPANY OF OTHER STAGS, AND…

Given the circumstances in front of us at the time, we make what we think is the right decision and only hindsight tells us whether it was the correct one or not. During my first photography-dedicated roar trip not long after the purchase of my first DSLR, I was faced with a couple of such situations. A ‘sparrow’s fart’ start had me climbing a Marlborough backcountry ridge towards a saddle that would give me an elevated view into the head of the next catchment. The sun was about an hour into its daily cycle above the horizon when I sidled from the ridge end round into the saddle, then slowly poked my nose over for a look. With nothing visible in the immediate area I quickly but quietly went all…

As a rifle hunter who selectively shoots for meat and trophies I’ve been attempting to harvest a respectable trophy of all the South Island game species first before moving onto the North Island game to try my luck. It’s fair to say that Boris the boar would be one of the more difficult to get the drop on just using a rifle and our skills to catch him out. They are cunning and unpredictable at times for sure. I’ve been lucky in keeping the freezer in wild pork when the hunting gods smile on me. I’ve also witnessed some mighty big boars over the last 30 odd years chasing these awesome game animals, usually from a distance that would make an army sniper worry and the pigs always seemed to…

Their original slimline model 84 for standard cartridges with its improved Mauser style controlled round feed in a lightweight and modern manufactured rifle has proved very popular. They then went on to produce a slightly fatter version called the 8400 for the WSM and magnum families, which we testfired way back in issue 2. Available in their synthetic stocked stainless version Montana, this added little weight to the original but added significant performance. Recently Kimber have released another couple of models that have reduced the weight even further – the Adirondack and Mountain Ascent. The Adirondack is an 18” barrelled short action version weighing just 4.8 pounds chambered in 7mm-08, 308, 6.5 Creedmoor and 300 AC Blackout. This rifle has a muzzle threaded barrel all ready for a suppressor, so…

Each person has their own morals and their own reasons to hunt. Some for food, some for trophies, some for both and some just enjoy getting out there. Many would say hunting is life and death, but most don’t really mean it. However for a few this statement is a little closer to the truth than others. For my Mum, bow hunting really did save her life. Here is her story. When my mother met my father, Dad had been bow hunting for over a decade and to say he was obsessed would be an understatement. Every weekend he was off chasing something with his bow. For my Mum to get any attention, or to spend any time with him at all, her only choice was to join him. Not…

I really don’t know, but I blame it on the Molesworth Station goose hunt. It does strange things to all who take it head-on and challenge themselves against the elements and the geese in one of New Zealand’s harshest environments. These hunts happen three times a year at the Molesworth High Country Station - Spring, Autumn and Winter. The Goose Hunts have become a Nelson/ Marlborough institution, and have been very well supported by local and out-of-district hunters alike wanting to get in there and get amongst it. Before you get a full understanding about the Molesworth you first need to learn a little about the history of the place. It’s New Zealand’s largest farm; at 446,734.4 acres it’s a whopper! They used to run sheep on it until they…

Their awesome little SEO7R headlamp is our general hunting and expedition headlamp of choice, due to its light weight, sufficient light output and good battery life. But every now and then you need a stronger headlamp for a specific purpose, like navigating your jetboat up a river in the dark, or setting a large decoy spread where you really need to be able to see the area like daylight to be sure you have everything in the right place. Some also like to spotlight game or pest animals at night, and if doing so on your own, a good headlamp is invaluable. For this sort of use previously we have been using the H14 which with around 300 lumens was ok for the job. Then LED Lenser came out with…

I have adapted this recipe from one that has served me well over the years, called “Chicken Marbella”. No one really quite knows where it origins from, or why it is called what it is, but it has a Mediterranean feel, with the wine, oil, herbs and citrus. The rabbits for this recipe came from night shoot on a North Canterbury farm. Toby and Jacob armed with the spotlight did a really good job really of lighting them up for me to shoot, thanks lads! If all else fails and you can’t get a spring rabbit then replace it with chicken or wild pork but you will need to adjust your cooking time and temp and dice the pork up. Rabbit Marbella (serves 4 to 6) » 2 x rabbits…