Found this photo while searching for some other photos on my PC. I may have posted it before I can't remember.

A stag I took somewhere in Central North Island of NZ. Taken free-range on a farm backing up to some wilder mountainous country.

(The animal has been re-positioned for the photo, as it was shot on a very steep grassy hillside.)

Nice twelve point red stag, don't know what it scores as I have forgotten. Might have an informal score sheet done by the Kiwi taxidermist (Douglas scoresheet).

Rifle is a Parker Hale M98 with Monte Carlo stock (yuck, I liked it back then) with a Weaver 4x steel scope with post cross-hair reticle. Bullet was a 150 gr Nosler Partition with 49 grns of IMR4064 for a velocity of approximately 2900 fps.

The stag was taken with one shot from below but only about 50 metres away. Angled from left flank into the heart. The stag was spotted by about a kilometre or a km and a half away, sunning himself in a hollow on the side of a river gully. We slipped off the hill we were glassing from, dropped down the steep hillside, through a creek, through a forest, scaring a hind or two, into a river/creek bottom. Using a hill as cover we approaced the stag, still out of sight, and crawled to the edge/skyline of the hillside (in the gully). The wind was in our faces. Sighting over the hillside, the stag was alert and took off at a run up hill, but before he could gather speed I managed to place a shot dropping him.

Great fun. Then the work to get him off the hillside.

Guided hunt with Brian Harre of Bushland Safaris (I think that was his business name?) in 1993. Part of an ADA hunt. We raffled off a guided hunt in NZ with Brian as part of a fund-raiser and he generously offered us a couples of hunts at half price for members as well. I took this red stag and another member hunted a Kiwi sambar stag.

I have a full hunt story on this hunt somewhere. Hopefully my story here agrees with what I may have previously posted and the hunt story written years ago!