Top of the hill and top of the morning, midway through a big loop with hopes of encountering the beaut 12-pointer I saw two years back. It’s been a non-event thus far. I’ve been hunting back to front instead of front to back as the predicted sou’-east is actually blowing gusty nor’west.
Just now, as that gusty wind blew up my back passage, I heard splashing. A noise alien to an arid hilltop. In a nanosecond I realised the splashing was a stag wallowing in the near-empty fire pond very nearby. I clutched the rifle in a firm embrace and bolted towards the pond. Too late. All I saw was the sunlit silhouette of a head and antlers as nasallyassaulted quarry fled.
Buggar the backwards wind. I skulk home, plotting tomorrow’s comeback.
Sunday – no church, no day of rest. I’m amongst it early and quietly chuffed that the breeze is minimal and blowing sou’-east. No big circuitous loop today, nope. I’m going full frontal and up the guts.
This morning I’m stalking like a pro, when suddenly my eye is drawn to a brown hump in the long grass ahead. The hump has its head behind a porcupine bush but every now and then a tantalising tease of antler bobs into sight.
Thanks to the porcupine bush, Stag feeds blissfully unaware I’m approaching with evil intent. Forty metre range, I see him lift his tail, dropping digested and pelletised greenery almost as fast as it’s going into his front end as mouthfuls of grass and clover.
I startle a covey of quail and they cackle and flutter. Stag pauses, steps from cover and stares at the quail. All the theories about camouflage and detergent washes get smashed right then. My bright maroon jeans and old grey top have been thrashed around in Cold Power for years but I am invisible to his questing gaze.
Stag resumes his feeding. He is young, has a crown that does not interest me and our freezers are full. When his back is turned I sling my rifle over my shoulder and get my camera out. Then the games begin. How close can I get?
Several times the young fella pauses his feeding to stare at the chortling covey. He is not alarmed, just cautious. I creep one step at a time, eye to my viewfinder, snapping one shot after another. At 20 metre range Stag is still oblivious to my presence and I’ve gotta say I’m feeling pretty cocky. Yeah boi – I’ll mature into a real deerstalker yet.
I tire of the game and thank Stag aloud, “Hey big fella, thanks for that.”
With an explosive leap he startles then gallops into the wild blue yonder without looking back.
Up at the stag wallow-cumfire pond I’m 10 minutes too late. The water is murk and a shiny mud trail enters the big radiata forest. Then I hear a half-hearted roar – the first of the season. The wallower is not far away but I carry on into the breeze, hoping to intersect him later.
Do I intersect him? Perhaps I do – perhaps I don’t. Once I enter the big trees there are stags roaring every which way. Which is him and who cares anyway? My brain addles, stag fever rips rampant through me – all logic evaporates – adrenaline takes its place.
Time flies. I wish I could.
I’m land-based instead. Sliding and stumbling down near-vertical. Clambering and crabbing up near-vertical. Contouring between stag song and rut pad. Hurrying, scurrying, sneaking. All the while they shout at each other, their insults echoing back and forth across the gully. The forest reverberates with noise.
I have a design fault. All these feminine attributes of mine do not attract rutting stags, and nor does my girly voice. I cannot reply to their testosterone-charged calls without letting the cat out of the bag – ‘look out, tits’n’bum type human in our midst.’
It’s their first day of roaring and they’re all streaking around seeing who has the deepest voice, the largest scrotum circumference and the flashiest crown. I have none of these things, and despite doing my best to streak around and intercept one of the noisy buggars, I can’t quite get it right.
I spook the first – he smells the evil. I then spook a second, when we’re both playing ‘I Spy’ – he sees the evil and, finally, I’m hurling myself downhill after one stag and spook another – he hears the evil. Three fails for this deerstalker wannabe.
Eventually, when I cannot pell-mell about in the nearvertical any longer I give up. Defeated, dehydrated and exhausted, I have had my derriere kicked. Roar 2022, day one, so much fun.
