My First Roar !

by Ben Carter

As we stepped out the truck into the rain, chucked on our packs and started the miserable 5 mile walk, I found the brighter side, this was my first roar and I had been looking forward to it for ages! We decided to go along the road not the river bed as the river was starting to get muddy and didn’t look to promising to cross in places. We finally got to the hut and started the wood burner almost instantly! The hut was well equipped with a gas stove, sink with running water and a flushing toilet!

It was really a hunter’s paradise. My dad and I decided to go for a walk up the ridge beside the hut when the weather had cleared. The first 200 meters is a killer – it rips into your calves and leaves you feeling tired straight away. As we continued up the ridge we started to spot some prints but nothing major. I found a good place to look across the gully at the slips and almost straight away saw two hinds lying down in the sun. It was fairly early in the day so we decided to have a go at stalking them, and finding a good place for a shot. We dropped down the side of the ridge, and boy it was steep! We soon hit a clearing which gave us a good place to shoot from, but we had to level out the angle of the shot a bit more, so after some fussing about, we had a good spot. We reckoned they were about 200 meters away – we soon found out other wise.

I took of my pack, layed it down in front of me, and rested the rifle on it and started looking through the scope. When I was comfortable with my rest and positioning I closed the bolt I took aim and fired. Missed. Another Shot, missed, and another shot and another miss. They had run along the clearing and were still in sight, but we decided not to keep shooting as we thought the gun might be out. So we made our way down to the bottom and met up with the creek and followed it back to the hut. When we told our hunting partner Dean about our miss fortune he said that they would have been at least 300 meters away, so the shots would have been dropping way low. Neither of us had heard a roar yet. But there was still tomorrow. After a good feed we hit the sack.

We were up early at about 5.30, but we didn’t leave the hutt till around 8! We went back up the same Ridge While Dean went of on his own. I found the same lookout spot where I had spotted the two previous deer from and started glassing the slips. I didn’t see anything then dad said ‘Got one ‘he pointed it out to me and we watched it for a while feeding away.

After some discussion we decided to go after it, dropping down the same way we did yesterday we found ourselves on the clearing again. I was holding the rifle and handed it over to dad because there was a steep bit and I needed both hands to get down safely. Then all of a sudden a hind ran in front of us about 30 meters away, and since I had just handed the gun over I couldn’t shoot it! And at those times you can’t fuss around by handing the gun around you just need to take the shot. And that’s what dad did. Bang, Bang, Bang! The hind was down. Then another one, a yearling popped its head out and dad handed me the gun, Bang! The yearling started walking as though it hadn’t been hit, and I lost sight of it as it went behind a bush, it didn’t come out from behind the bush so dad told me to go down and see what was going on. I saw the yearling just standing there, so I shot again and it was down. My first deer was a baby!

Mean while the original deer we were going after was still standing there on a slip on the other side. But we had shot two and weren’t going to be greedy by shooting a third. There was a good blood trail were the yearling had slid under some bushes so we told the dog Bella to ‘find the deer’ pointing to the blood trail. She took off and she guided us in the right direction – and she could see the deer but was hesitant in approaching it because this was only her second trip and this was the first deer she had seen. We got both the deer down to the bottom of the slip where it was flat and did the butchery, taking back legs and back steaks. Bella was having a hell of a time eating bits of meat off the deer!

We got back to the hut and told Dean, he was happy. He had had a pretty good day as well, he walked straight into a stag about 3 meters away and wasn’t ready for the shot and the stag bolted. Bugger! We showed Dean the photos and when he saw that I had shot a yearling he started calling me Ben the Bambi basher! So when ever we are in the bush this is what I get called – pathetic isn’t it!

The next morning we had a sleep in and went for a walk up the ridge again, looking for a stag – we had no luck but spotted some more hinds but didn’t go after them. We were three days into the trip and hadn’t heard one roar. A bit disappointing really but that’s hunting for you. Dean had seen a stag and a hind on a clearing that evening but to far away and very little time to stalk so he didn’t go after them.

Next morning Dean and I went up the same ridge as he was looking for some meat for the freezer, while dad and Bella stayed at the hut for a break. On the way up we spotted a hind, Dean roared at the hind because he thought it would look at us, but the thing bolted! Must have been a S**t roar! We continued all the way to the top and had a two hour lay down in the sun listening for any roars and glassing around. Saw nothing so we decided to head back. On the way down we saw another two deer, we thought we could go after one of them, so we tried but found out it would be a lot harder then it looked so we called it quits and went back to the hut.

Satisfied that we had had a good trip we decided to go home early. A good thing because the stove just ran out of gas! We had a slow walk out with heavy packs. Not one roar heard over the trip, but 10 deer seen. We will be back next roar to find the big stag every hunter dreams of!