I just got back from another wonderful hunting trip for spotted deer and mouflon on the island of Lanai.

For phots and detail you can take a look at some of my previous posts:

Introduction to Hawaii stalking

My dad and I as usual went together. I was trying out my new Merkel drilling in 16/16/7x65r for the first time in Hawai`i. It was only the second time I used the gun on a hunt. But it a very accurate rifle, with hand loads with 154gr hornady bullets.

100yard 3 shot group:

Drilling with its first kill a European woodcock:

It was a combination hunt we were on a public land mouflon ewes only the first day, and then a private land mouflon and axis deer the second day. Lanai also has one of the best sporting clays courses in the state (there are only two so it pretty easy to be best!) and I booked a 100 targets for the middle of the day on the first day. I had never shot this course before even though I’ve been to Lanai many times, and I’ve missed shooting sporting clays since I moved back to Hawai`i.

First day was pretty standard, get the required tags for public and private land, get supplies, and sight in the rifle. The rifle was dead on for shooting out to 200 yards.

Out the first day, since we could only shoot mouflon ewes we saw tons of axis deer and mouflon rams! First time for only ewes and I found it hard to tell ewes from young rams and young ewes. Hunting was not successful, only two confirmed ewes spotted and they were spooked and ran off.

The middle of day is hot and not productive so we did a couple of hours of sporting clays. Nice course, some really hard shots. I brought my Fabarms Classic Lion over for the course, but being a dunderhead I had forgotten my choke tubes! I only had cylinder and cylinder in from the last weekends skeet shooting. Things did not look good! Well I did the course and between my open chokes and my rusty shooting skills I was just under 50 out of 100, damn pathetic… But I had a great time.

We hunted the rest of the afternoon, but again mostly saw tons of deer and a group of some nice mouflon rams, the magnificent five we called them (the one on the right was very nice):

The following day we out on private land looking for some animals to salvage our honor. The morning seemed to be starting off badly, we got turned around a bit in the darkness driving out to the hunting area. It was a place we’ve only hunted once before and its easy to get lost driving in old cain fields. But we managed, but as we started walking and glassing there was not much to be found. A few does at a far distance, but not much else. We then started a long walk to an anther area, but again got mixed up and went the wrong area. Not much visibility, and no deer to be seen!

However, not all was lost as we walked slowly and somewhat quietly through the bowl we were in we saw some movement. Quickly we spotted two small axis stags not far. One spotted us and ran off, but the other didn’t notice us and continued to eat. The limit was one antlered or horned animal, so I decided not to take him. I’ve shot a couple a bit larger than that one. Then I saw movement to the right. A large group had caught our scent downwind and started to run out of the bowl. There were 3-4 does/hinds and 2 nice stags in the group. I had made a primitive monopod out of a silver oak sapling that morning that had a fork on it. Not the steadiest monopod, but it worked. I rested the drilling on the monopod, and engaged the single set trigger, and waiting to see if the herd would ever slow down. On a ridge about 200 yards out, about half way up the bowl, the group hesitated. A really nice stag stopped and took a look back at us. It was all I needed. I gave a light squeeze to the light trigger and the stag was hit behind the shoulder. He ran about 20 yards and then fell. I could not belief I had made that shot standing at that distance.

We got up to him and he was dead on the side of the ridge. It was about 8:0am. He was huge, just a guess but he must have been about 160-80lbs. A large deer. We took some photos and cleaned him out, a very large of amount meat. My dad took the head and cape and I packed out all the meat on a pack frame. It was started to get hot by the time we started climbing back out of the hill and the pack was heavy. Man what a workout coming out of the bowl and then over the hill we had walked down. We were happy, but beat by the time we reached the jeep!

Its the nicest deer I've taken in Hawaii so far: