Harley's Roar '05

The Roar 2005

By Harley O’Hagan

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After a frantic Friday morning I finally managed to finish my most urgent jobs and escaped from work in time to catch the 12:35 train back to the Hutt. I was met at Woburn station by a visibly overexcited Rex. The Bighorn was already running as I leapt in and we squealed out of the carpark. Rex had picked up my gear the night before, so all we had to do was pick up his dog Finn then aim for the hills.

Time flew by on the drive up as we practiced our roaring and stopped at every deer farm for tips, and as a special treat, Rex pulled out his mouth trumpet and gave a moving rendition of When the saints go marching in. When I joined in with my bulls-horn-enhanced vocals, Finn started to wonder why he hangs round with this pack of idiots.

We arrived at the road end, changed out of our city clothes and all three of us shouldered our packs (or saddle bags, as our respective spinal structures dictated) for the walk in just as it started to spit. A short way in a big slip had wiped out the track and as Rex had been over the steep detour before, he suggested we try to get across the slip. Half an hour later, two scratched and frightened hunters were back plodding up the start of the detour, followed a few metres behind by a ridgeback who was pretending not to know them. We trudged into the darkening mist above the bush line and stopped at the hut for a quick dinner of cold venison sausages and bread. We took the opportunity to call home for a weather update, and although the news wasn’t good, we pressed on toward our intended destination.

A couple of hours later, the cold and wet had convinced us to set up camp where we were, so we dropped our packs and we put up Rex’s one-man Huntech bivvy, in which he assured me he had spent many a comfortable night with a mate and a dog. I was sceptical, but found the dog on my neck kept me quite warm. What with his short hair, it wasn’t long before Finn started inching his way up between us for warmth. We woke up at about 12:30 am to a roaring stag. It sounded like it would have been 3 or 400 m below us and it was pretty worked up. At 2 am he was still going. The racket boded well for our coming adventures, but in the dark there was nothing we could do but hope for better weather in the morning.

Our prayers were answered and although not sunny, visibility was good the next day. We left the tent and some excess gear, packed up and headed off along the tussock ridge. We gave a good few roars in the gully where we thought the stag was last night but getting no reply we moved on.

Before too long Finn started to wind and pointed off the side of the ridge. Rex spotted a hind feeding a couple of hundred metres below us. She kept looking off in one direction, at what we thought must be a hidden stag. We watched her for a while waiting for the stag to appear, but we eventually decided that she was alone and that although we were after stags I would bag her for meat. I was waiting for her to feed out from behind some tussock when a young fawn appeared from the spot that the hind had been watching. I immediately put the rifle down and we enjoyed watching the two of them go about their business. We roared and even waved and although the hind looked right at us, she became quite alert but wasn’t concerned enough to take off.

We carried on, roaring and glassing as we went. About ¾ hour later we rounded a small tussock knob and I immediately noticed a large black shape about 300 metres below. I checked it out through my 4 power scope and as I swapped it for my binoculars for a closer look I said to Rex, “If that’s a stag it’s a blimmen big one”. It was a stag and it was giving an unfortunate bush a jolly good thrashing. We could see that it had two points on each top and figured it would probably be an eight pointer.

We had a quick council of war which included a few polite exchanges regarding who would be the trigger man. We decided that Rex was the most polite and I slid a round up the spout. There were a few small guts in which I could climb down under cover, and Rex would give me directions along the way by radio. I sneaked along just to the side of the ridge out of sight of the stag, and then went over the ridge at the spot we had chosen. Shortly after I started dropping Rex told me that three deer including a four point stag had been watching me over the other side of the ridge and that a larger stag had popped out a few hundred metres away. But being always the gentleman, he said he’d wait until I’d finished shooting before opening up at them.

Pretty soon I’d lost enough height and Rex told me to start sidling toward the stag, being careful not to get between him and the downhill breeze. I was almost in position when Rex warned me that there were also a couple of hinds in view and that they were looking my way. Bugger! But having no other options I kept going.

The country looked much different from down there and it took a minute or two on the radio before I managed to locate where the stag was. It was lying down and I could see its head and neck with the top of its back showing above the tussock. One of his hinds was feeding behind him and keeping an eye out for trouble. Because of the high tussock I couldn’t get a good shot from where I was so I inched forward to the next tussock mound keeping a leatherwood between me and the hind.

I couldn’t shoot prone because of the tussock so it had to be a sitting shot from about 60-70 metres. I put the wavering crosshairs on the stags neck and squeezed off a shot. The hind was looking around, startled but the stag was lying where he was before. I’d got him! No, he stood up, took a few steps forward and looked right at me, standing his ground.

I aimed for his big black neck and pulled the trigger again. Nothing happened. In my excitement I hadn’t cocked the action properly. I struggled to sort it out and fired again. Another miss. The stag took a few more steps closer and still stood his ground, presenting the same big neck target. Rex was yelling over the radio – “Shoot him! Shoot him!”, and struggling to keep an eager Finn in tow.

I fired again. Another miss! I couldn’t believe it – useless! The stag had finally thought “Bugger this, I’m going home”, and made off up toward the saddle with his two hinds. But he still wasn’t in any rush and stopped often. Rex told me afterward that he was sure the stag was heading for me rather than the saddle. The stag finally came out from behind a big leatherwood, trotting casually along and presenting a full broadside. I put the crosshairs on his shoulder and fired. In the recoil I lost sight of him but heard the sweet “thwoomp!” of a hit. Yes!

Then I looked up and saw the stag still moving uphill with his hinds. I couldn’t have missed again! Rex was yelling into the radio “Run up! Cut him off! Shoot him again!” But the stag had run a few yards I suddenly saw four legs fly up in the air and breathed a sigh of relief.

As I made my way over toward my quarry I heard a single shot from up on the ridge and smiled to myself knowing that Rex must have taken one of the other stags.

I climbed up and around a steep tussock gully and down to where I thought the stag had fallen, and saw his two hinds disappear up over the saddle. I checked all the little dry tussock covered creek beds, and scanned the area with my binoculars for any telltale hooves, but could find nothing. Not even any blood. I couldn’t believe it. Maybe I hadn’t seen the stag tip up. Maybe it had just wheeled round to head downhill. I wished I had have kept a closer eye on it and not counted my chickens before they hatched.

I radioed Rex and sat down to sulk and wait for Finn to arrive so I could ask him “Where’s the deer?” Rex had dropped a stag on the spot from at least 300 m with his new 7mm mag. He wasn’t sure of the head but thought it looked bigger than his last 6 pointer.

Finn arrived and started tracking over to the next gully and I was not too happy. He didn’t manage to find anything and I was having serious doubts as to whether the stag had been hit at all. Rex hadn’t seen him fall and kept saying that if we’d killed a stag that big we’d be able to see him easy. In a last ditched effort I took Finn right down toward where the stag had been lying when we first saw him. On the way down I could have kissed the mutt when he found big splashes of blood on the tussock. I stayed with the blood while Rex followed Finn into a little tussock creek. I kept a sharp eye on Rex’s face as he brushed aside the long grass. “Is it there?”

Rex replied “You’ve just shot yourself a nice…” and I waited while he counted, “…10 pointer”. I raced over to check it out for myself. It was a small but even 10 point head, and the large bodied stag was completely hidden. I was stoked!

After taking a heap of photos we dragged the stag out onto a flattish spot for butchering. It was starting to spit and cloud in and we still had Rex’s stag to sort out so we had to be quick. I didn’t have a stag skin yet so I was keen to take that too. To cut a long story short, an hour or so later I had two hind legs, backsteaks, some shoulder meat and a skin in my pack and I was climbing up toward the saddle with my arms tingling from lack of circulation. We left the meat and head under a leatherwood and headed back toward Rex’s deer.

By the time we arrived at our gear we were cold and getting wet so we decided we had to leave Rex’s stag to pick up on the way back, and get down below the bush line to our next campsite quickly. After a half hour hike we had located the spur we needed to go down through the mist. Rex said that by dropping down early and sidling across to the spur we could save time, but I wasn’t to sure and said I’d take the long way. I knew I’d made the right decision when Finn left Rex and followed me. Ten minutes later Finn and I were making good progress down the spur and had to stop to wait for Rex who was nowhere to be seen. Soon I heard thick leatherwood being painfully crashed through and spotted Rex, who decided to follow the dog from then on.

Some of Rex’s hunting mates had hidden a small tent under a log at the campsite and we set it up next to a tarn / dirty wallow and dug trenches round it to keep the water away. Finn was sitting at the tent door from the word go waiting to be let inside with his muddy feet.

After setting up our gear, we avoided the temptation to get out of our wet clothes and into bed and went out for a quick hunt before dark. We shortly came across a large slip and immediately spotted two deer, and hind and a spiker. I was a little too excited and made a bit of noise trying to point them out to Rex. The hind caught the movement and looked over our way while the spiker kept feeding. No older stags appeared, and we watched them for about five minutes (and the hind watched us) before they finally decided to get out of there, disappearing through a gap in the trees. A couple of minutes later the spiker came back to the gap for a last look them slowly wandered off.

We saw some good stag sign in the bush, but our roars went unanswered and we slipped back into camp before the light disappeared.

In the morning we got up early and left for the slip again. This time there were no deer visible, but we had our roars answered by a couple of stags way below us on the other side of the river. We thought about the distance we had to walk to get out that night, and the number of deer we had seen on the tops the day before, and figured our best bet was to pack up and head back up to the ridge.

While packing up I had to nip off to answer a call of nature. When I arrived back I found Rex singing “All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey…”. Very musical man, that Rex.

It was a couple of hours hard slog back up to the ridge and during that time the cloud came in, swirling in and out of the tussock-clad folds of the mountains. It was a real treat for us to watch a New Zealand Falcon spiralling up above us on a thermal to vanish into the mist above.

It was with some surprise that I mounted the crest of the ridge to find the whole next valley bathed in glorious sunshine, while behind me the visibility was about 30 metres. We stopped for a snack and a call home to say we’d likely be pretty late. We couldn’t see any action around so we made for my stag. Rex helped me bone out the legs and took one of them himself, and left me to tie the head to my pack while he headed for his stag.

I finally got it sorted and shouldered my pack. Standing up was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. I’d carried a few animals before but never anything that heavy. I stumbled about 20 metres along the ridge and sat down for a rest. It was about 6 hours to the carpark with a normal pack and I felt sure that I was going to have to jettison some venison. I was trying to work out what I’d drop first; the skin or the leg? Anyway, I carried on, at about the pace of a snail with a broken leg and reached the point where Rex had left his pack and the lunch supplies. I made myself a salami and cheese sandwich and realised it had been about six hours since I’d last had a decent meal. I radioed Rex who I could see with the binoculars removing his stag’s head. He had decided that the meat wasn’t worth recovering, having lain ungutted for a whole day, and we decided I’d carry on and he’d catch me up.

The extra fuel really helped and as the terrain flattened a bit I started making good progress, breaking about every two minutes. I reached a good spring and stopped to fill my drink bladder and waited for Rex and Finn. I saw their silhouettes come over the skyline and heard the radio crackle and Rex break into song. Although the lyrics were somewhat derogatory, I appreciated that he had taken the time to write a song about me.

We reached our first campsite about 4pm and packed it up, and reached the hut just on dark. We were adamant that we’d stay only as long as it would take to grab a quick snack, but a couple of other hunters had just arrived on their way in and we got yarning. As the two fine gentleman hunters began preparing their dinner – wine, sausages, vegetables, etc, etc, we boiled some water and tipped in a couple of soup-in-a-cup sachets, passing it back and forwards slurping out of the billy like a couple of animals, so I’m surprised they even talked to us.

Rex helped me out on the last stretch back down to the car by carrying the other leg. I won’t bore you with the details other than to confirm that the antlers on our backs only intensified the soul destroying capability of the steep overgrown detour over the big slip. There was very little talking, no smiling, and most definitely no singing. We were knackered but relieved by the time we reached the truck at 10pm that night. The late night drive home necessitated pies, V and lots of loud singing to maintain driver alertness. Most of the songs were of our own making and our voices that night would have brought a tear to Hayley Westenra’s eye.

Rex dropped me home at 2am and my long suffering wife got up to let me in. She even put up with three days of blood and filth in bed until morning, bless her compassionate heart. Here’s to good hunting, great mates and super family. Cheers.