The sun rises in New Zealand the same way it does in North America–in the East, but after that, all bets are off. North is warm and south is cold, today is tomorrow and even the toilets flush backwards here in the South Pacific. Certainly the Old World’s equivalent of our elk, the red deer, has not learned how elk are supposed to behave. Ten days of intense bowhunting for free-ranging red stag has proven that to me.
Like so many hunters, I had heard the stories and seen the pictures of impressive red stags. The beautiful portrait of the “Hartford Stag” in those insurance ads was the archetype of the very animal I sought. For years my mouth had watered at the vision. I read all I could and fantasized about how I might get the chance to hunt them. Europe has red stags, of course, if you’re wealthy enough to own a private preserve, and Argentina has wild deer in the mountains. But in recent years, New Zealand has emerged as the number one place to hunt reds.
So when I met Adrian Moody, a New Zealander and hunter of red stag, my dream grew closer to reality. I wanted, a good free-ranging red stag, and Adrian, a seasoned guide, had the credentials to provide it. Having taken several bull elk with a bow, including one just this past fall, I felt fairly confident. A red stag seemed a logical challenge. In April of this year I boarded the 12-hour flight to Auckland, New Zealand, with a puddle jump to Taupo.
Perhaps I should have had a clue that this hunt would not be easy, but I missed the signs. When I got off the plane at Taupo’s tiny airport I met a hunting couple from North Dakota who were parting Adrian’s company. “You’re going to have your work cut out for you,” the man cautioned me. I figured he was just, well, a lightweight. After all, these were rifle hunters. How hard could this be? My confidence was bolstered even more when I learned that the man and wife had both shot beautiful stags.
I doubted red deer hunting could be any more difficult than elk hunting, where long walks in mountainous country are the norm. I was wrong. This was different.
Kiwi red stag guide Adrian Moody uses a piece of PVC tubing to help project his mouth calls.
|
First, let me say that if you like the walking part of elk hunting, you’ll love red deer hunting in New Zealand. There may be no people on earth who enjoy hiking as much as Kiwis. Tramping, they call it, and I met grandmothers over there whocould walk the pants off most of the macho elk guides I’ve met.
Second, if you think you’re just going to stumble into red deer the way you stumble into elk, you’re wrong. These babies are high strung and nervous. They don’t like strange sounds, and they don’t wait around to find out what’s bothering them. Still, they can’t be supernatural, right? I was hoping one would make a mistake.
Adrian and I were to hunt the sprawling 85,000-acre Ngamatea station, a sheep and cattle ranch, the largest private land-holding on the north island, to which Adrian has almost exclusive hunting rights and whose mountain forests and healthy population of red stag would keep us busy, there was no doubt. It reminded me a bit of some of the country in Colorado where I’d hunted elk the previous fall.
|
OF ELK AND DEER
Like elk, red deer have a rutting season in which the stags call frequently, wallow in the mud, chase hinds and generally act rank. This season is called the roar, and it occurs in early fall, or about the month of April, Down Under. Before heading to New Zealand, I was anxious to hear about the other elk and their behavior. Unfortunately, trying to gather comparisons between red deer and elk isn’t easy, because few bowhunters have spent time with both. Guides from overseas can describe the roar to you, but they typically have little to compare it to our elk bugling season. Having bowhunted in New Mexico just six months earlier, as well as Colorado, elk were fresh on my mind when I reached the mountains of New Zealand.
The first stag I heard roar did so at 4:30 a.m. from the blackness of an expansive valley below Adrian’s cabin and frankly, I didn’t recognize the sound. I sat perched on the throne of the outhouse, a less than regal position, and thought I was listening to the bellow of a beef cow. When I entered the cabin and Adrian asked me if I had heard any reds, I answered a sincere no. It wasn’t until and hour later, at the start of the first of many long tramps, that we heard a red roar and Adrian was able to point out the sound to me.
I was astounded. This was not a roar. Lions roar, kudu roar, dragons roar; reds bellow, I decided, for it wasn’t as romantic as I’d expected, almost a drawn out, well, mooooo. It did hold some similarities to an elk bugle however. At the beginning, it had that same kind of gravelly growl that starts a bugle, and sometimes, at the end, the red stag would finish the bellow with a grunting chuckle, much like a bull elk. There definitely was no bugle, no whistle to the red stag’s call.
Red deer evolved their low-frequency call because that carries best in the deep forests of northern Europe. Conversely, the elk’s high-frequency whistle is the sound that carries best in the
open plains they roamed for thousands of years. Ever notice that an elk in the timber is always closer than it seems? That’s because in the thick stuff the sound doesn’t carry well and the animal has to be almost on top of you to be heard.
It wasn’t until much later in my nine-day hunt that I really heard the roar part of the red stag’s call. It was a morning when reds seemed to be calling from every direction as Adrian and I hiked into the area we planned to hunt. Most were bellowing, but a few of the animals actually did seem to roar. I’m not sure if it was the great distance, or some difference in the voice of the stags, but the sound was impressive and lion-like.
HEEDING THE CALL
Imitating the sound of a red stag would seem easy, and perhaps for those with the right voice and a little practice it could be. I tried, and uttered the worst kind of bawl you could imagine. Adrian, my guide, pinched his nose and produced a quite plausible bellow. He even had a short piece of one-inch PVC tubing he used as a roaring tube. He frequently received answers for his efforts, though with one exception, the stags never seemed anxious to come our way. Red deer, like elk, respond to calls in random and unpredictable ways. Sometimes it drives them off, sometimes it stimulates them to answer, and sometimes, it makes them simply stop what they are doing and trot determinedly your way. Primarily, we seemed to use the call to keep tabs on a stag’s location, or to divert a potential bust.
Adrian did bring one very impressive stag to the call late one morning. The stag and I were in a valley while Adrian sat perched on a mountainside above. We had split up to try and waylay another stag when an unseen stag began roaring from its bed in the timber a quarter mile away. The animal seemed so cooperative that I decided to make a move, hoping Adrian kept it busy with his calling. When I finally spotted the stag he was up and moving away, so I took chase, using a series of small dips and rises as cover. What I didn’t know is that a much larger stag, a third animal with a beautiful rack and strong crown points, was just over the next hill and headed my way. The stag and I crested the hill and spotted each other at the same time, freezing in a face-off 30 yards apart. All I could do was try to draw, but the animal spun and streaked away before I leveled my bow. Adrian had to watch helplessly as the animal and I moved on our blind collision course.
NO COW CALLING
Female red deer, or hinds, resemble cow elk in temperament and demeanor. Both animals share a similar buff-colored rump patch, though the hind’s coats are redder than cow elk and their overall appearance is sleeker and a little more deer-like. I’ve always thought cow elk, with their darker manes, looked a little bit more like camels than deer. Red hinds look more like deer.
One distinct difference in the two animals is the amount of vocalizing they do. Cow elk are extremely vocal. Red deer are not. Most archers who have pursued elk know the chirps and mews made constantly by contented cow elk. These calls keep animals together and as hunters know, are great for settling and attracting bull elk. As a matter of fact, a few years back a revolution of cow calling made its way to the forefront of elk bowhunting, making the use of cow sounds for taking bulls more popular than bugling itself. Cow calling has proved a great advantage for elk hunters. Red stag hunters enjoy no such advantage.
Although red deer hinds don’t mew, chirp or bleat, they do possess a very loud, sharp alarm bark.
On one of my last nights bowhunting, Adrian put together a plan for stalking a stag that had been using a local wallow. Each night on our way back to camp in the darkness, we could hear the stag roar from down the valley to the west. On one evening, while Adrian took care of some stream-crossing improvements while I was out hunting, he heard the stag roar just a small drainage away from his position.
The author downed this bull as the animal searched for guide Joseph Sanchez’ enticing cow call last fall in Colorado. Although they are considered similar species, the author feels that, overall, elk are a less wary and less challenging quarry than free-ranging red deer.
|
The following day we moved above and around the stag’s wallow in the early afternoon waiting to see where he might show. About an hour before sunset we heard him bugle, but the stag had fooled us and dropped into the next drainage. We didn’t know there was also an active wallow in that creek bottom. Red deer wallows look just like elk wallows and they use them the same way, so as we crested the next hill we had little trouble spotting the worked-over mud hole. Within moments the stag and his three hinds came into view in the bottom. He was a good stag, not a great one, but definitely a shooter. We watched as the big 5×6 ran off a 3×3 stag, chasing nose-to-tail like dogs might do. We used the diversion to descend the hill, amazed at the speed and power of these animals.
When we finally reached the last bit of cover, we got to sit and watch the stag breed one of the hinds. She was so ready to stand that, comically, after the stag’s mounting, she mounted him as he tried to walk away. The range was still over 60 yards and too far for a shot. The stag moved back and forth several times running his girls up and down the creek, but never stopped within range. At one point, in the last shooting light, the stag stood perfectly broadside downhill, at the far outer limits of my range. In desperation, and because it the hunt was nearly over, I took the shot, my only shot at a red. The arrow flew over the animal’s back. It was a risky attempt, and luckily, a clean miss. The hinds took a great interest in the noise that came from my position, and soon we had one staring and barking our way.
PHYSICAL IMPRESSIONS
In addition to interesting wildlife like paradise shell ducks, spur-winged plovers, Australian magpies, hedgehogs and bushy-tailed possums, the countryside we hunted was vast and impressive. But nothing impressed me like the red deer.
Red stags are incredibly beautiful animals. The stag breeding the hind at that wallow wasnít the first Iíd seen at fairly close range. Adrian led me up a mountain early in the hunt, a brutal hour and a half climb that started two miles hike from camp. Soaked with sweat and covered with chaff and twigs from the bush, we reached the plateau and hiked another mile to a secluded rim rock. As we crawled to the edge we could hear a stag roaring and he soon came into view with four hinds on a meadow several hundred yards below. He was a beautiful 6×6, with even tines. His rich, dark coat had a sleek look and his body was compact and muscular. He was somewhat smaller than a bull elk, and the best comparison of the two beasts I could conjure was that what blacktail deer are to mule deer, so red deer are to elk.
The stags I encountered in New Zealand had a wide range of coat color. This one was dark, but some were red, the color of mule deer, or whitetail, in summer. Most of the largest stags we saw had a rich dark coat, almost a chestnut
or dark auburn, but instead of their faces being darker, they were buff-toned, somewhat like the face of an old golden retriever.
Adrian told me stags are territorial, and will dependably stay in the same general area, as long as they are not disturbed. I found this to be true as I spent the next two afternoons trying to sneak into the area below the rim rock, only to have to back out each time. When the wind changed on the third afternoon I was able to build a tiny ground blind in the brush above the wallow and sit in it until dark. Luck was with the stag on this day, because the wind picked up keeping he and his hinds in the lee of the nearby timber. He was so close I could hear every roar and grunt he made, but he didnít show himself. The next evening he followed the hinds out of the same patch and strutted his stuff just up the mountain from me. I felt sure he would come to the wallow, but the best he would do was to bed in plain view 80 yards from me, bellowing his superiority to the world. It was an unforgettable sight.
The hinds feeding around me wouldn’t let me stalk that bull, so at dark I snuck out of the area,undetected. I didn’t know that the wind would change 180 degrees that night, forcing me to abandon my efforts at that high meadow. I honestly felt lucky just to watch that stag on his meadow in the New Zealand highlands.
NO CIGAR
We were close, Adrian and I, but not close enough. I don’t believe that enough bowhunting has been done for free-ranging red stags to have figured out the system yet. In the future, as more bowhunters pursue these animals, we may find ways to produce new sounds that will bring stags running. I’m convinced that there must be a hind call not yet discovered that will lure stags.
In the meantime, red stag remain one of the toughest trophies I have hunted. They are shy and quiet compared to elk, and intolerant of nearby disturbances. While you can come crashing into a herd of elk, a red deer that hears a noise is soon gone. And red deer don’t seem to roam as freely and widely as elk, so the deer know their territory well and live in a manner that takes best advantage of the safety of predominant winds and the terrain.
|
Several times during the hunt Adrian offered the use of the .308 rifle he kept back at camp, and frankly, we were well within rifle range of many wonderful stags, as well as a number of record book quality sika deer. But I had to decline. If there is one thing I have learned in my years of bowhunting, it is this: Nothing will so surely guarantee failure with a bow as the promise of a backup gun. I came to bowhunt, and bowhunt I must, stag or not. Besides, what kind of a bowhunting tale would it be, if the bowhunter used a gun?
A TALE OF SUCCESS
If I’ve made elk sound like pushovers in this account, my apologies to all the elk bowhunters out there who know differently. I received another dose of humility last fall when I hunted elk in the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico and failed for the second straight year to take a trophy.
I did, however, redeem myself in Colorado a couple of weeks later with guide Joseph Sanchez of Eagle Spirit Outfitters. Joseph is a young guy who, like Adrian Moody, has that incredible gift that the best deer guides share: a sixth sense about game and how to get close to it. I must admit, however, that at the end of five days of hard hunting in Colorado, I was getting concerned, and tired.
Joseph and I followed a bull and his cows to the top of a steep ridge on an evening when the sky was spitting rain and my hunt was nearing a close. When the bull and cows bailed over the top and down the other side near sunset, I thought taps had blown on my elk hunt. But Joseph was undaunted. He spotted another bull in the canyon below and with a series of carefully chosen cow calls was able to bring the nice 5×5 on a steady climb up the steep canyon. When the bull cleared some brush 25 yards below I was able to launch an arrow that found home. The bull ran 50 yards before pitching head-over-heels on the steep slope. Sometimes that’s all it takes, a moment of luck.
© 2011 InterMedia Outdoors