New Zealand Hunting
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WildRose
Well-Known Member
Live your life young, so you'll have lots of memories and very few regrets.
You don't want to be the old man sitting around with a bucket list he'll never live long enough to fulfill.
lilharcher
Well-Known Member
SP6x6 - your son is an animal and a fine marksman. And I thank him for his service! His collection of heads is amazing, and true "free range".
I want to point one thing out to folks, particularly around Stag hunting. Natural, free range Red Stags will top out around 7 pts on each side…..they crown out and are super cool. And I'm not knocking it all, but those monster Stags you frequently see are genetically modified and because some land owners own 100's of thousands of acres, they can still be "free range". Again, to each their own.
I want to point one thing out to folks, particularly around Stag hunting. Natural, free range Red Stags will top out around 7 pts on each side…..they crown out and are super cool. And I'm not knocking it all, but those monster Stags you frequently see are genetically modified and because some land owners own 100's of thousands of acres, they can still be "free range". Again, to each their own.
WildRose
Well-Known Member
You should take a look at some of the Red Stag running loose all over Texas, Argentina, and New Zealand. A 7x7 is definitely not the upper limit for free ranging Red's.
lilharcher
Well-Known Member
Wildrose - had no intention of making this a ****ing contest b/c again, I am totally cool with free range or not. And heck, my uncle raises some monster Red Stag in South Texas, so I am a bit educated. Have also had a number of conversations with an ex New Zealand game warden to validate. True, mature and unaltered Red Stags are between 250 -300 inches in the wild with an occasional stag exceeding 300". As for horn growth, they are like our Elk in the US, whereas a 400" Elk is a MONSTER, a 350" Stag is it's equal.
Those animals pictures may be released or bread from GMO animals, and live on a free range (yes, some without a high fence) but are essentially 'estate' stock.
Again, a monster unaltered free range stag will have 14-16 points (total) and score between 300 - 350". They are extremely easy to tell apart.
Those animals pictures may be released or bread from GMO animals, and live on a free range (yes, some without a high fence) but are essentially 'estate' stock.
Again, a monster unaltered free range stag will have 14-16 points (total) and score between 300 - 350". They are extremely easy to tell apart.
NZTahr
Well-Known Member
You are correct. Good free range wild Red deer are mainly 10-14 points and what we call a classic style of being even on each side. A good free range and wild bred NZ Red deer tops out at about 14 points and is about 40" in length and spread. Anything better or bigger than that will probably have game park or estate blood in them. The game park/estate deer are not "genetically. modified" - just selectively bred to be big with multiple points. These Red deer are mainly on estates behind fences for "canned hunts" or are free range on large estates/sheep farms. They are most often released onto the farms rather than being wild bred there. There is a natural drift of these free range estate deer into public land so from time to time exceptional deer are shot by the ordinary person on public land that contain their genetics.
The pic in my avatar is a wild bred, public land Red deer that is representative of what the better heads are like.
Mostly us Kiwi's hunt public land and look slightly sideways at people who pay to hunt on estates or behind the wire. We also accept that it is each to their own and if thats what blows your hair back we say go for it. Until Covid, estate and public land hunting by over seas visitors has been a great source of over seas funds for the country.
There are still many opportunities for a do it yourself hunt for you in NZ. The chances of getting a good Tahr or Chamois are reasonably high if you put the leg work in. Getting a good representative Red deer should not be difficult, but if you want one of those big ugly multi point things you will need to open your wallet. The wider you open it the bigger the deer and easier the hunt will be. You will have bought your bragging rights though, not earned them.
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WildRose
Well-Known Member
Those are free ranging animals from root stock that was released hundreds of years ago.
So many of the high fenced places in Texas have gone bankrupt over the years with their fences down for months or years at a time we've got all sorts of exotics free ranging over about half of the state.
Long before the first high fence places was even an idea there were quite a few very wealthy land owners on the state that imported exotics from all over but especially Africa and Europe and they just turned them loose. Those that were already adapted or whom adapted quickly enough managed to survive, those who didn't died out.
Even up here in N. Texas there's a bunch of free ranging Aoudad and more than a few Red Deer that had been originally introduced on the 6666's, PItchfork, Wagoner, and Lamb's head more than a hundred years ago.
We have the same situation in SW Texas.
The bulls pictured came from Argentina where they were introduced into the wild in 1906 and New Zealand where they were introduced into the wild around 1852.
NZTahr
Well-Known Member
Stags from NZ. Not bulls.
Kind of like shooting fish in a barrel. Yep we have big rack bucks that are in "Breeding Pens" (natural environments) in GA. Then the bucks are micro chipped and \when they come to feeding stations documented. When they reach the right amount of points someone with right amount of money per the tag on the buck get to take a rack home. $10K, $15K, $20K+
They also send the breeding stock around the country to other ranches to enhance bloodlines-for a Hunt of your lifetime!
