Issue 27 - Feb 2012 Mar 2012

Well I hope you’ve managed to run around enough over January to shed those extra Christmas pounds!

I know its been an interesting year so far round here, with a lot of wet easterly conditions making the hard and high trips we like to do this time of year a bit of a lottery. Still, we’ve made the best of the weather and Fiona has even managed to stay one up on me. Her two yearlings with two shots at 625 yards with the 7mm Fatmax in the first week of 2012 gave her the head start and I haven’t been able to peg her back yet!

Now we’re rolling on down to the best time of the year – the roar! But there’s plenty of country to cover and sausage venison to shoot before then. This is the best time of year to keep everything but the primals for sausages, as the deer are at their fattest. See the BRB’s article on page 46. With fat deer you don’t have to overpower your venison sausages by putting mutton/pork/beef etc with them!

We didn’t manage a Wapiti ballot at all this year, but we’ve had a few invites to tag along here and there so we’ll see how things go. Good luck to those with ballots and please read Roy’s article carefully and take the time to evaluate properly before pulling the trigger. The future of our Wapiti depends on it!

This issue we’ve got:

Big stags from the East Coast!
Dave’s Stewart Island Whitetail buck double
AJ teaches how to call Sika stags electronically
At last, a must for our readers who send in photos - Matt teaches us how to take good “hero shots”
Timaru Creek tahr
Jase and Jono hunt roaring West Coast stags in 6 months bush
Blake gets his massive Bull moose!
The Back Ridge Butcher makes venison sausages
Johnny talks guns for young ‘uns
Adrian and Nick score a Red stag each!
An 8 point Sika by bow!
Carol shows us where to place that arrow
How to safely hunt roaring Reds
Roy teaches us how to judge the age of that Wapiti in front of you
Greig unpacks the hunt Part IV – we don’t know how lucky we are, mate!
The Versamax one year on – how it stacked up after a full seasons hard field usage
“Risk and reward” – Teresa talks E collars, that controversial training tool
Paul ponders where we are heading with our mallards – time to pony up for some research!
Tech Talk – Sizing die problems – the long and the wide of it!
Tony makes Rabbit burgers!