SDMF Newsletter 2001 Stories

SANTOFT

Wow, great to draw a Sambar block again and this time it looks like a really good one. My first experience on the ballot was as a companion at Moutoa. Jim shot a Spiker and I was fortunate to get some great photos of several Sambar as they crashed through the flax towards me. Second time was a one day ballot hunt at Waitarere, and we didn't even see anything. Only got ourselves to blame though.

Two years later and its Santoft. Two days hunting and two hunters allowed. The block itself is huge and we were to have it all to our selves, What an opportunity!

Saturday dawns pouring with rain and we hunt the small trees in light drizzle. Mmm, barked shins and lacerated hands from cutty grass, what a nice way to spend a Saturday. Some sign seen but very hard to move quietly. We try another block of trees in the afternoon and this is really nice with quite a lot of marks, droppings, scrapes etc. We hunt line abreast and by the time we make it to the end of the block Duncan has put up two.

Next day we fruitlessly glass some cutover that had some sign on it. A pair of Paradise Shell Duck alert the world to our presence and we head back to the car for lunch. We hunt the same promising block from yesterday after lunch. Once again we move through the nice country line abreast and very very slow. Actually we had only gone about 150m from the car when I detect movement ahead. Hello that's the top of a nice looking antler waving around. Another step reveals a big bodied stag very busily creating a scrape, hence the waving antler. The shot presented was quartering one angling forward into the chest. Bang and the deer lopes off instantly. After Duncan recovers from a near heart attack, he joins me and we begin the search "Here he is Robbie," shouts Duncan.

Yahoo he's piled up within 25m and wow he's huge. What a great hunt.

Special thanks to Warwick Beedell and to Craig Ferguson for the hunting tips and to Bruce from Agriquality for carrying out those back legs for me.

Robert Templer

TANGIMOANA

The hunting area was great with a mixture of different stages of pine and conditions. Good amount of stag sign from the rut but on that weekend there was no fresh sign at all in the same areas. Very little fresh sign found, in fact only one lot near the farm edge even though I covered most of the block both inside the compartments and around the edges. A little disappointing in that respect. Also the creek at the gate proved to be a problem for my Holden. With the westerly wind and obviously a full tide when I came to go out on Sunday pm the car broke down just out of the creek. The crossing must have been two foot deep and without any other alternatives I had to try to cross it. Anyway $350.00 later, a long tow job and a day in the garage it was fixed enough to get us back to Tauranga. Also if anyone finds a number plate PQ9245 at the back corner of block 3 you will know whose it is. There were a lot of trimmings on the roads after the hedge trimmer had been through.

This all sounds rather negative but its not and its not your (SDMF) fault. On the contrary I really appreciated the opportunity to hunt the Sambar and cannot say enough to others about how helpful you have all been. I'm sure I would be a lot happier if I'd seen something also if the wife didn't know how much the car cost to fix! As long as I am married I don't think I will ever be able to come back down and chase Sambar again, but that's the breaks.

Keep up the good work in offering people like me the chance to chase Sambar (legally). Again I appreciate all the work that SDMF put into getting this all together.

G Fluerty

MOUTOA

We covered the flax very thoroughly over the days we were down at Moutoa. On the 2nd visit the H2O table was very high, especially on the SE side. In fact it was flowing. The deer were not present on the SE side but all concentrated on the dairy farm side. The wind was NW and blowing at about 30-40 knots. We hunted back and forth into the wind and came across 6 hinds and a huge stag.

We did not see the 2 stags encountered on the first visit (24" 6 points and 18" 4 points). Late in the day I shot a yearling hind for meat. Warwick said they are good to eat. I believe a large population has left the Reserve at this time with the hunting pressure as there were large amounts of sign moving up river.

On the first visit a dead fawn was found (dead about a week). The mother had been walking around and around it for some time judging by the look of the cut up ground. On the hunting day a dead hind was found (about 2 weeks) south of the cabbage trees on the edge of the flax. I have now eaten some of the deer we shot after hanging it in the killing shed for a week. It was tender, not gamey tasting and quite simply superb.

The whole operation has been very enlightening and the enjoyment of looking at these animals immense. Thank you Warwick for your interest and time.

M Aveling

Comments on MOUTOA

Being a first time Sambar hunter I was keen to get to know Sambar habits and habitat. I resisted the temptation to shoot one of three young stags sitting on a clearing eighty metres from the stop bank when I approached the block at first light. I grid searched the entire flax portion of the block with wind in my favour for most of the day. During this time I observed 17 animals and had a dozen or so others crash off unsighted. It is quite likely some animals were counted more than once as the latter part of the day was spent reworking a portion of the block that held animals and was conducive to stalking (some flax areas are more so than others). By late afternoon I had been unable to locate a trophy stag, so shot a hind for meat, as well as fulfill game management obligations. (In my mind it is important to maintain the correct ratio or balance of hinds to stags, so gene pools are not depleted and so some stags reach maturity). It is also surprising how taxing 13 hours of ducking and weaving in a flax swamp can be on the body and mind. The meat was excellent after being left to hang for 10 days. Grateful for the opportunity, keep up the good work.

D Patterson

WAITARERE

Thank you for the opportunity to hunt this block. We drew Waitarere 3 a couple of years back and had a great time there. This block was as good although the vegetation was a lot thicker in the smaller pines. Day 1 was spent hunting in heavy rain. The area we chose to stalk was in the slightly older tree compartments. The rain didn't penetrate the high canopy to a great extent but the sign level was few and far between. There was still enough to keep you interested though! We decided to split up for a while and just look for a few promising areas to concentrate on for the afternoon and the following day.

Back at the truck at midday I was busy scoffing into a chicken sammy when 2 of the Sambar monitors pulled up in their vehicle. As the weather was crap I was quite surprised to see them about. They're certainly keen these guys! While standing there chatting I spotted a movement over their shoulders and was pretty much stunned to see a Sambar stag casually wandering up the road!! Unfortunately I wasn't the man with the rifle so we could only watch as it pushed it's way back into the pines. Unbelievable!!

I met up later with my mate and he was spewing to think that it could've been him and that he could have shot the stag from the back of his Hilux!!

The next day was a beauty so we spent the day picking our way through the smaller pines that were about 20 feet in height. The sign was quite impressive in these areas and we managed to spook an animal for our efforts but, other than a few throaty barks, he keep himself hidden from our view.

A great couple of days that we both thoroughly enjoyed. As for the deer, well, they're safe again until NEXT time. Thanks SDMF

Rick Arnst / Warren Searle

SANTOFT

The weekend before my Sambar hunt, the 23rd & 24th of September, I managed to snap the front right inner axle of the Landi, this was not of great concern until the Wednesday before the hunt that the end of the starter motor flew off into the bell housing and ceased the engine . Due to the fact that I hadn't shut-up about hunting Sambar Deer, my work colleagues forced me to take the Ford Laser work car and the trailer, in the hope that I would be cured by the time I returned. Friday 6.00pm I realised, now in Levin, that I had my work colleagues keys with me ...to bad

I entered the forest at about 5.30 am on Saturday and wrestled, rustled, crawled, swore and sulked my way through a far too larger proportion of my assigned block. In the too short a time that it took me to do this I came to the assumption that the slightest rustle of pine trimmings, pine needles, pine cones, pine scented dry moss, other debris covered in pine stuff and pine flavoured sand would make the wary deer dial the Sambar Deer Taxi Service and get heli-lifted to the Marton Pub. At 10.00am on top of a large mound of sand and pine stuff I admitted that me and my Mauser had never hunted anything quite this invisible (definition: NOT THERE!! as in SOMEWHERE ELSE!!). The words of Jake The Mus echoed through the Santoft Forest that morning "Hey, where the $@#& is everyone?"

At about 1.30pm I stared to use my brain (this hurt), I entered the most northern end of my block and DAIWT (did as I was told) "work the block into the wind, very slowly and zig-zag if you can" ....this works, but how wide is a zig-zag? And if you zig into the wind don't you end up zagging away from it. Anyway I managed to spook a hind I guessed that was what it was as I never saw it. I could only come to that conclusion as I have never heard a hare loudly crash though undergrowth or shuffle its feet.

5.30 the next morning saw me back at the same area as the afternoon prior once I had gotten into some decent cover I took my shoes off (and stood there looking sheepish as about 40 rabbits coughed and died), from there on it took me about 5 hours to cover, DAIWT style, an area about the size of a footy field. After once again getting dismayed I sat down by a creek to have a smoke, well I may as well have lit that bloody cigarette up the Sambar Hinds arse, because two steps later, she honked at me (from 10 feet) like I had forgotten to give way, crashed off through the bush and left me to decide whether to change my undies, wipe my chin or raise my rifle. The difference this time was that she had let her guard down and allowed me to see her (full frontal and flank), WOW.

I'd like to finish by saying thanks to the Sambar Deer Foundation and in particular Warwick Beedell for the opportunity to see, let alone hunt, these most magnificent of Deer.

Ben Harland

Comments on MOUTOA

D Patterson