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TOP JOBS

On New Zealand's South Island you can get a view of the ocean while standing 4,000 feet up a mountain hunting red stag in the snow.

It is an odd combination, but one that is becoming more popular with American big-game hunters, including Tyler's Allen Findley and Johnny Hill, who returned a week ago with 400-plus inch stags, Himalayan tahr and other species on the island.

The two booked their hunt through South Pacific Safaris, one of a growing number of outfitters operating game ranches in New Zealand. South Pacific operates out of Kaikoura, a town on the island's east coast between Christchurch and Picton.

"Every year we go to the Northwestern Hunters Expo in Salt Lake City. Johnny noticed one of their pictures from a Cabelas catalogue. We talked to them about doing a stag hunt. We booked it a year and a half ago," Findley said.

A hunter-friendly nation, Findley took his 7mm magnum and Hill carried his .270 magnum on the trip that took them from Dallas to Los Angeles and then 13 hours to New Zealand.

The outfitter hunts a 4,000-acre private ranch that because of its mountainous terrain hunts more like 10,000 acres.

"It was beautiful," Findley recalled. "From any vantage point on the property you could see the ocean."

While winter is giving way to spring in the United States, with New Zealand being below the Equator the hunters were greeted by the change from fall to winter. They faced heavy snows at the highest elevations during the hunt. And that was where most of the hunts took place.

Driving by ATV partially up the mountains, Findley and Hill concluded the walk up on foot and then began a spot-and-stalk hunt for the red stag bulls.

A European import, the New Zealand red stag population is believed to have originated from Scotland and England. Today they are farmed for meat and antlers and hunted as a game species.

Red stag are related to the North American elk and are similar in appearance and size, if not slightly smaller. The main difference is the antlers that stay as single beam throughout on elk and form a "crown" on the top on red stag.

The hunters had a week to take their stag, but neither needed more than a day to find a "super gold" bull, one topping 400 inches of antler. The bulls were just coming out of the rut and could be found loafing on the mountainsides.

"Luckily on the stag it was a one-hunt day hunt," Findley said. "We saw a good one by noon. He was about 350 yards away. The way you hunt is you have to shoot from one mountain to another. We tried to get closer. He was on a plateau on another mountain. We were down on our hands and knees crawling and at 310 yards the guide said this was as close as we were going to get. He asked if I was comfortable with the shot and I said yes."

Hill had a similar situation, but a tricky vertical shot down the mountain.

"He was with a bunch of other bulls. He played cat and mouse in and out of the brush for about an hour. Johnny was on his stomach shooting down. Finally he came out and gave a clear shot at about 200 yards," Findley said.

The hunter compared the hunt to those he takes annually to Colorado for elk, except that the New Zealand hunt was more difficult on the hunter.

"It is similar to elk hunting. I would say this terrain was far worse than Colorado, but it reminds me of Colorado with no aspen trees," Findley explained.

With their stags on the ground, the two had time to also take Himalayan Tahr, an import from the Himalayan Mountains of Nepal and Tibet. Findley also took a chamois, a wild arapara ram, also know as arapawa, a fallow deer, another wild ram and spent two days hunting wild hogs on trips that were reminiscent of hunting in East Texas.

"That is one thing that is not different from here. They are overrun with hogs. They hunt them just like we do with dogs," Findley noted.

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Contact Outdoor Editor Steve Knight at 903-596-6277 or by e-mail at outdoor@tylerpaper.com