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.

Home On A New Kind Of Range Although red deer are native to Europe, New Zealand has been the animal's second home for more than a century. The New Zealand government considers them a pest in some areas. No protection is offered, and one doesn't even need a license to hunt them. Kiwi hunters can pursue red deer year round, even in national parks. Large red deer simply don't exist where they must survive continuous hunting pressure and don't have the benefit of being managed for genetics. There are a handful of private New Zealand lands managed for free-ranging red deer that do have good, if not great, stags. Much of the red deer hunting in New Zealand occurs in enclosures. Not that these enclosures are small; some are thousands of acres in size. But, the animals hunted in the enclosures are farm raised, then released, so they have lost much of their innate caution. Adrian hunts only free-range red deer.

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.