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This is story mostly about my wife's first deer. A fallow deer taken in New Zealand. I got talked into a Red Stag hunt in New Zealand by a friend of mind for 30 years. He recommended Shane Qinn Alpine Adventures. I told him I wanted a free range hunt but, he replied it wasn't but the area was so rugged you felt you were hunting Red stag in a remote wilderness. Well after a five mile drive on this two track back into the bush where Shane has his home, you felt the hunt was going to be a free range hunt. We were in the mountains of the North of Island and boy were they were rugged. I saw many stags during the hunt. But, I wanted to hunt on foot and I wanted a heavy beamed animal. After three days of walking, stalking, climbing, falling down. I finally found the stag, I had of always dreamed of getting. My wife went with me while I hunted, she wanted to see what it was like. She had never hunted big game before and Shane talked her into hunting since we had four more days there at his place. I should mention, my wife had never fired a large caliber rifle before. Shane lent us his Steyr-Manlicher pro hunter .308 for her to use. She fired two shots at a target, bulls eye both times. She opted to hunt Fallow deer. She was kind of worn out by now by all the climbing so we took a four wheeler to the top of the mountain using game trails. In the process, the four wheeler hit a slick spot and rolled over on top of us. Luckly no one was hurt. We hunted downhill from there, we did this for three days, after glassing the three days and never getting closer than several hundred yards. If it could go wrong it went wrong. That last afternoon there,my wife said something is going to die today. Well about an two hours before dark, we spotted this beautiful Fallow Buck. It was big and wide. Because it was in the wide open, we had to detour around back of mountain and back up a valley. We got within about two hundred yards of the Fallow buck but two red stags were in front of it. The guide says there it is. My wife settled in laying down prone with a knap sack for a rest. The guide says please don't shoot the stag. The two stags were in front of the Fallow almost blocking the shot. My wife waited it seemed like ages before the Red stags moved out of the way for a clear shot. My wife had to make a head on shot because it was getting close to dark and few more minutes she would not be able to see, the light was going fast. She made incredible downhill shot hitting the animal right in the V of the neck, dropping it right there. The main beams on this animal were 30 inches long. There was no ground strinkage on this animal. I do not know if this was a fallow deer or not but my wife or I did not care. My wife was so excited, it was unbelievable. She later said, she now understood why I love to hunt. It was not the kill but everything that led up to it. The beautiful countryside, the people you meet, she could not stop talking about even when we got back to the states.

Brooks

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Brooks

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