Otago Stag Morning
April brings golden autumn to Otago NZ with swift morning winds racing up the hills and rain springs creeks to life. It was nice but too warm and too dry for this time of the year. Deer starts to roar thru the night, and you get that infectious urge to climb the hills and look for stags with swollen necks and deep challenging calls. I started climbing late as the sun was up and I was still tired from last night’s rabbit cleaning session.
A supressed Ruger 10/22 with NVG scope chewed through few packets of ammo and I really enjoyed it as I don’t get to play with such a gear back home. The valley below had a heavy fog hanging over it like a pancake. Yesterday, I spent few hours playing with my rifle and adjusting to higher altitude, lower temperatures and dry conditions; very different from the warm and humid seaside Brisbane. It’s important to test the rifle’s zero before I start hunting and understand effects of the local conditions on a rifle’s ballistics. I measured wind with a pocket wind meter to get familiar with movement of plants in the hills and refresh my memory. In the end, everything you see, feel or measure has to relate a value in your scope turrets. Most importantly it is a mental exercise of marrying knowledge, observation and a mechanical system to result in a positive outcome.
I wanted to find a good spot to control and observe the valley and then wait for a fallow stag to
