Hunting
Dylan’ s first buck
by Garth Johnson, Auckland branch
This is a story not only about a successful hunt but also a few observations from my more than 20 years’ hunting in the Woodhill Forest, and as a Committee member with the Woodhill Fallow Management Committee.
I always have a restless night before a hunting trip. I try and visualise how best to hunt an area in the forecast weather conditions and the terrain within the block. This trip, however, I wasn’ t even going to carry a rifle: I would be a guide of sorts.
My 14-year-old son Dylan and I were heading up to Woodhill for a day’ s hunting on a ballot block. I’ d already had a hunt a few weeks earlier but a friend of mine, Peter, had won a ballot and had offered Dylan an opportunity to hunt as one of his companions. I had hunted with Peter in previous years but he had been unsuccessful, so this time I offered to help guide him to get his first fallow deer.
A 4 am wake-up is not what most teenagers like on the weekend but Dylan didn’ t grumble and after a quick breakfast we drove the hour and a quarter to Woodhill. I like to arrive in the dark and walk into my block to be where I want to be hunting at the critical time when the
Ideal fallow habitat at Woodhill. Young pines in the foreground provide a popular feeding ground, close to cover and sleeping areas in the thicker pines at left.
deer are on the move. It’ s also a good time to be slowly stalking through the pines or glassing from a vantage point, as the light is changing. Fallow at Woodhill are reasonably wary, which is not surprising as around 750 hunters pass through the blocks each ballot season. It has been my observation over the past 20 years that the deer are very active at first light, when they move from their feeding areas( sand dunes, farmland and areas of recently planted or recently cut-over pines) to their sleeping areas, which are generally blocks of thick, un-thinned pines. The reverse happens just on dark … most of the time.
We met up with Peter and his brother Ian at the car park and walked into the hunting block. Peter had drawn one of the coastal blocks that had a large area of 2 – 3-year old pines plus a large area that was
Dylan on the dunes. Deer are unlikely to be out in this open country in the middle of the day … but you never know …
8 NZ Hunting & Wildlife 196- Autumn 2017