IT'S CALLED PERSEVERANCE!
For countless hours I sat on cold, freezing faces in mid-winter, dreaming of and waiting for that big Rusa stag to walk out on the sunny face opposite. It never happened. Oh yes, I saw lots of hinds and a few smaller stags, but nothing big. On one trip I saw three small stags, including one about 20 metres away in the bush. I passed them all up.
On yet another mid-winter roar trip I watched seven Rusa for hours on a clearing opposite and failed to spot the stag. My ongoing trophy search was an incredibly frustrating exercise in challenging Urewera country and, to make it worse, it was always in mid-winter. That's the time of the Rusa roar.
My rifle was beginning to wonder why I even took it for a walk when, one day in July 2003, everything changed in a few seconds. As I stalked quietly, just inside the manuka on a clearing up the Whakatane River, I heard an animal move away to my left. I sneaked quickly up the hill and out of the manuka for a better view and there right in front of me, standing alert, was a Rusa stag. But he was just a spiker. While he looked magnificent, he wasn't what I was after. Then a movement behind him to the right caught my eye. A majestic-looking Rusa stag had just jumped up from where he'd been lying in the grass, sunning himself, and was looking intently to see what had disturbed him. Seconds later he was on the ground and I had my trophy - I'd hardly had time to catch my breath. He later scored 185 3/8 DS, a constant reminder that when you are trophy hunting, you need to pass
