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This is the sort of size animal I think it the Grendel be ideal for.
Sika (Cervus nippon) are a smaller deer, present in the Central North Island of New Zealand. They have a reputation for cunning, difficult to hunt and the venison is better than from the red deer. They seem quite resistant to helicopter shooting, so numbers have persisted over the past few decades. Hinds live within a small area only a mile or two across for their whole life. In some areas there is very little food left and the animals are quite small and only breed every two or three years.. The Sika Foundation is open to members of the public to join for NZD50. They organise hunts targeting females to manage the herd and control environmental impact, as well as hut maintenance, pest control and bird conservation work, which our government Department of Conservation (DoC) doesn't get enough funding to do.
To start this hunt, we walked in for 6 hr to a DoC hut, which has recently been repaired and painted by Sika Foundation volunteers. It's winter here in New Zealand, so we had a certain amount of rain on this trip and the bush was quite wet to push through. Having eaten a hearty dehy dinner and many hours later a breakfast, plus sleeping until well after it was daylight, I felt good and strong heading out for a hunt up a nearby bush ridge. This country is all forested, with very few clearings or views out. Occasionally you come across groves of mildly unpleasant vegetation, like this "bush lawyer" (Rubus cissoides).
x Lawyer Mat 450x90.jpg
However, a lot of the bush is quite open and pleasant to stalk through. You have to move very quietly.
x High Bush 96k.jpg
You can see there's not much good food in this sort of forest, unless you like moss, dried leaf fall and the occasional mushroom.
After several hours of sidling through slippery gullies and around bush lawyer and peppertree thickets, I came into the open high bush and heard a couple of the characteristic whistles Sika make. These weren't the ear splitting squeals you sometime get that can stop your heart. It was more as if they were just keeping in touch; perhaps a faint whiff of my wind had reached them but not enough to be sure there really was danger around. But there was. I came to a rare open slip and there was a grey deer grazing on dead grass and ferns. I slipped off the safety of the Sako Vixen and squeezed the trigger. There was a quiet click. I've had a few misfires with factory ammo but not with reloads. I hadn't used this rifle for a few months and I wasn't onto it. I lifted the bolt handle and it fired. Fortunately, there was no damage and the empty case flicked out onto the moss beside me. The shot went into the gravel a couple of lengths in front of the deer. I had also had this happen before but only on the range. I had put it down to the firing pin hanging up, due to fine rust after a couple of days in the rain. Unlike the 85 model, you can't disassemble the cocking piece end of the bolt on the Vixen L461 to clean it or dry it.
Now the deer was hiding but I didn't think it had run away. I reloaded (didn't occur to me this might happen a second time) and moved forward. Fortunately, there was a second deer, which moved out from below me and I was able to make a shot, entering just to the left of the spine, angling down through the stomach and chest to exit on the right of the brisket. This was from about 30 yards and the exit hole was about half an inch, so the 123gr ELD-M didn't seem to have expanded much. The deer stepped out 10 or 20 yards onto the slip, then had difficulty keeping it's feet on the ground and rolled over into the ferns. Good One ! A deer ! The first deer rematerialised and sprinted up the slip and into the bush, much wiser and hopefully inheriting twice the food supply.
The hind was quite grey, with none of the usual red coat and spots and it was fairly large for a sika, so I thought at the time it was a sika-red hybrid. But afterwards, on reading, I decided it was actually a typical winter coat and certainly the face and head shape were more in keeping with a sika. I other parts of these ranges, considerable hybridisation does occur.
x Long deer 500x90.jpg
I boned out three legs, one backsteak, the small eye fillets and some of the liver. Hydraulic pressure had forced yellow stomach contents around one backsteak and one front leg and discouraged me from doing a more thorough post mortem into the chest cavity. It was only about 10 or 12 pounds of meat from a whole deer, but plenty on top of my pack to carry out over the hill to the car the next day.
This is the sort of size animal I think it the Grendel be ideal for.
Sika (Cervus nippon) are a smaller deer, present in the Central North Island of New Zealand. They have a reputation for cunning, difficult to hunt and the venison is better than from the red deer. They seem quite resistant to helicopter shooting, so numbers have persisted over the past few decades. Hinds live within a small area only a mile or two across for their whole life. In some areas there is very little food left and the animals are quite small and only breed every two or three years.. The Sika Foundation is open to members of the public to join for NZD50. They organise hunts targeting females to manage the herd and control environmental impact, as well as hut maintenance, pest control and bird conservation work, which our government Department of Conservation (DoC) doesn't get enough funding to do.
To start this hunt, we walked in for 6 hr to a DoC hut, which has recently been repaired and painted by Sika Foundation volunteers. It's winter here in New Zealand, so we had a certain amount of rain on this trip and the bush was quite wet to push through. Having eaten a hearty dehy dinner and many hours later a breakfast, plus sleeping until well after it was daylight, I felt good and strong heading out for a hunt up a nearby bush ridge. This country is all forested, with very few clearings or views out. Occasionally you come across groves of mildly unpleasant vegetation, like this "bush lawyer" (Rubus cissoides).
x Lawyer Mat 450x90.jpg
However, a lot of the bush is quite open and pleasant to stalk through. You have to move very quietly.
x High Bush 96k.jpg
You can see there's not much good food in this sort of forest, unless you like moss, dried leaf fall and the occasional mushroom.
After several hours of sidling through slippery gullies and around bush lawyer and peppertree thickets, I came into the open high bush and heard a couple of the characteristic whistles Sika make. These weren't the ear splitting squeals you sometime get that can stop your heart. It was more as if they were just keeping in touch; perhaps a faint whiff of my wind had reached them but not enough to be sure there really was danger around. But there was. I came to a rare open slip and there was a grey deer grazing on dead grass and ferns. I slipped off the safety of the Sako Vixen and squeezed the trigger. There was a quiet click. I've had a few misfires with factory ammo but not with reloads. I hadn't used this rifle for a few months and I wasn't onto it. I lifted the bolt handle and it fired. Fortunately, there was no damage and the empty case flicked out onto the moss beside me. The shot went into the gravel a couple of lengths in front of the deer. I had also had this happen before but only on the range. I had put it down to the firing pin hanging up, due to fine rust after a couple of days in the rain. Unlike the 85 model, you can't disassemble the cocking piece end of the bolt on the Vixen L461 to clean it or dry it.
Now the deer was hiding but I didn't think it had run away. I reloaded (didn't occur to me this might happen a second time) and moved forward. Fortunately, there was a second deer, which moved out from below me and I was able to make a shot, entering just to the left of the spine, angling down through the stomach and chest to exit on the right of the brisket. This was from about 30 yards and the exit hole was about half an inch, so the 123gr ELD-M didn't seem to have expanded much. The deer stepped out 10 or 20 yards onto the slip, then had difficulty keeping it's feet on the ground and rolled over into the ferns. Good One ! A deer ! The first deer rematerialised and sprinted up the slip and into the bush, much wiser and hopefully inheriting twice the food supply.
The hind was quite grey, with none of the usual red coat and spots and it was fairly large for a sika, so I thought at the time it was a sika-red hybrid. But afterwards, on reading, I decided it was actually a typical winter coat and certainly the face and head shape were more in keeping with a sika. I other parts of these ranges, considerable hybridisation does occur.
x Long deer 500x90.jpg
I boned out three legs, one backsteak, the small eye fillets and some of the liver. Hydraulic pressure had forced yellow stomach contents around one backsteak and one front leg and discouraged me from doing a more thorough post mortem into the chest cavity. It was only about 10 or 12 pounds of meat from a whole deer, but plenty on top of my pack to carry out over the hill to the car the next day.
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