Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/769056
The second morning at Poronui started much like the first. Up before dawn and off to the high country to start glassing when the light became good enough. The first movement we saw on the hillside below turned out to be a band of fallow deer, not sika. Several good fallow bucks, with their uniquely palmated antlers, came into view, but we decided to stick with our plan of finding a sika buck. We switched to another peak where we soon spotted a sika buck in the valley below. Unfortunately, he was bedded down underneath a large bush and looked to be perfectly content where he was, basking in the early morning sunshine. The good news: I had plenty of time to get to a prone position with a bipod up front and my daypack under my right elbow. This is about as close to benchrest-solid that you can achieve in the field. Mark ranged the deer at 301 yards, but there wasn't even a whisper of wind. The only question was, would he stand up before our patience wore out? It seemed like an hour, but less than 15 minutes later a sika doe walked past our buck, and he stood and turned, giving me a perfect broadside shot. Loading him in the the truck was a lot easier than the red stag. We startled a band of wild sheep as we where we could see them. Unfortunately, both were very high 300-count bulls. But then the third sauntered into view. I muttered to myself, "Well this guy is still too big," but Mark turned to me and said, "Shoot him, if you like. He's out at 290 yards." Which, using an 85 Sako chambered in .300 Win. Mag., I was thrilled to do. Among the largest species in the deer family, a mature stag weighs somewhere between 350 to 500 pounds. Mark was able to get his truck close to the stag, but we had a bit of a tussle getting him into the bed. If someone was making a YouTube video of this event, it might well be titled, "Watch Two Old Guys Try to Push/Pull a Stag into the Bed of a Pickup!" Such are the memories, of course, that make the hunt. A fter shooting a fine red stag, I was ready to put my feet up until it was time to go fishing. Mark would have none of that. Poronui, it turns out, is ground zero in New Zealand for sika deer, the first herd in the country having been released on the ranch's property in the early 1900s. The ranchlands continue to provide superb habitat for this elusive Asian species, and, arguably, Poronui is still regarded as the number one locale for trophy sika in all of New Zealand. 228 • S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S trees and brushy plants in the steeper cuts. It was from one of these thickets that I saw my first New Zealand red deer, an utterly amazing stag that Mark whispered would easily score well over 400 SCI. The profusion of points on his massive, backswept rack was mind-blowing; a vision, it struck me more like something out of a Jurassic Park-like past than anything you might see today. Of course, as a writer and guest of the lodge, this world-class stag was well beyond my pay grade, but nonetheless, he was a great sight to see in the wild. Through the day we moved to different vantage points to glass new hillsides, not always seeing red deer, but often both sika and fallow bucks and hinds either grazing or on the move. Without question, the Poronui's 16,000 acres are among the most game-rich areas I've seen anywhere in the world. We spotted at least four more stags during the afternoon, each, in the reverse of the usual dilemma, too big to shoot. Late in the day we made our way to a high bluff overlooking an expansive meadow, a prime spot that Mark hoped would hold at least one good stag or two. Mark's hunch was on the money. In the anxious minutes that passed before the sun began to set, two stags moved away from beneath the bluff and out onto the meadow