The Roar 2025 - who's getting their gear ready?

[Wapiti]

Just wondering if anyone here gets into the Rut every year?
The full moon's out tonight, and the Stags are going absolutely nuts, roaring and bellowing like they are possessed. The Fallow Bucks have been croaking like crazy for a few weeks now in Southern Qld. The turn of summer into autumn and the full moon at this time is generally thought as the trigger. Certainly sometimes it is, sometimes not. And it coincides with Easter time roughly too and school holidays.

Stags are thrashing all the trees of their bark, the Bucks are climbing the trees to get their scent as high up as possible and digging out scrapes and marking them like crazy.

Do any of you plan a trip every year?
Do you hunt on private property, maybe try your luck in state forests, or maybe a club?
Or ballot system? In Aus, not so much NZ.
Red deer or Fallow? Sika? (can hybrid with Reds, as can Wapiti - wrongly called Elk which are actually Moose)
Do you take time off work to take your young kids away to participate during their school holidays?
Generally where do you get an opportunity to hunt for deer?
Or maybe, the "Rut" is not your thing, you like to wait until it all calms down.

If any of you are involved in a QDM system (Quality Deer Management) system, how do you find it? Are you getting good results for all the efforts? Obviously I understand that if you are involved in a serious QDM with knowledgeable organisational leaders you would never hunt during the rut because that just doesn't work with those principles at all.

Keen to hear if there are any passionate deer Rut hunters out there and their tips, tricks or thoughts.

[wrenchman]

wapiti I have I have been thinking of doing it for a few years then COVID hit and right now it seems like the world is just now getting back to normal being that I am from the states logistics are my largest issue.

[Wapiti]

I like to see how well managed game hunting countries do things, and from what I've seen the Americans take this stuff very seriously. Big banners welcoming outside hunters to their towns, parties, people getting together and really seemingly obsessed with doing the right thing. NZ is very similar in that, they don't go "shooting" for deer, they are tough, fit, serious buggers and they have my respect.

I was in our local town getting some supplies today, and quite a few of the people shopping were "not from here" and loading up for their campsites. The polished shiny chariots with the Spika and gun stickers are parked everywhere. And that's just my town, we have fallow deer wild here and they are really quite common. I can onlky imagine towards Glen Innes etc, or the Brisbane Valley. I reckon on Thursday I will give town a miss.

[AZZA'S HJ47]

I tried to do this last year however a work accident last year will probably force me out of this year. Ill start making some plans to perhaps do some ground work and see what's out there and hopefully make the most of next year.

[Wapiti]

Surprised there's not more people here who get into it and out and about. Sometimes it seems to me, almost like the footy season each year, the anticipation is all over the place amongst the keen hunting types is huge! It sure is a pretty interactive and exciting time.

[wrenchman]

I live in Michigan and in the rural areas they shut the schools down opening day of gun season Nov 15 and guys that don't hunt for health reasons will be in camp just to be part of it.
hunter numbers have been dropping for a while and I do miss the days of the big camps deer numbers are much better and I kill more deer but deer camp ain't about just killing a deer.

[Wapiti]

True, the experience is a huge part of it. There are a few groups here working with enthusiasm to give themselves and invitees some of that type of scene you have over there, because we don't have deer naturally here. For example there is an ADA group a few joints down from me with a syndicate, breeding for their own benefit and they are having some good results and a guaranteed future, but not too many doing this really.
Landowners and the governments don't see any benefit and often classify deer as feral animals that legislation says they need to control. And wild herds in public land hunting areas don't really get good genetics to improve because nothing gets old enough to be able to be judged for it's worth, or even get to be able to get mature enough to breed. I suppose that's what conservationists and governments want.

[Oldbloke]

I was going to go away for couple of nights chasing fallow today. But it's warming up again. So, I'll delay till after Easter now.

Hope to take grandson out for a couple of hours fox whistling this avo now. Just need to contact the land owner later to confirm.

[Wapiti]

That'll work out better, because of how the deer breed and mate.
The females will not usually let the bucks have their way from the start of "the roar" until they have cycled 2-three times from when the bucks start getting horny. They wait and decide which one they like the best, only then letting the breeding happen.
Unfortunately, most "roar" hunters are after the best heads, and these animals are killed before they get to actually pass on their genes. Hunting in late May and onwards is the way to have quality animals in the future, meat or trophy.

[Billo]

I went out the last few weekends and listened to the Reds roaring around here, a lovely 18 pointer was shot about 1300m away on that weekend on a neighbouring property.

I'll head out tmw to see if thr fallow are still croaking

[No1_49er]

Red deer or Fallow? Sika? (can hybrid with Reds, as can Wapiti - wrongly called Elk which are actually Moose)

You're a bit shy of the mark there, "Wapiti", WRT the species Wapiti and Elk, which you have said are actually moose.
Absolutely not.
Several hundred years ago, moose were called "elk" in Europe.
Moose are, in fact, the largest of all the deer species and are quite distinct from wapiti/elk.
Wapiti is a Nth American Indian tribal name for elk; the word being derived from a particular bodily feature.

The name wapiti is also used exclusively for the descendants of elk introduced to New Zealand by President Roosevelt in 1905.
Some moose were liberated in NZ in the early 1900s but it is believed that none now remain. The area of liberation was not favourable to their foraging needs.

49er

[Wapiti]

Sorry bud, not correct from the literature I have from a number of sources, including D. Bruce Banwell and other leading academics and experts on these animals.
I was going to put up a few quotes from research literature and to back it up, but frankly I'm tired of wasting my time arguing with people who frankly just want to score points or elevate themselves.
Prior to starting to breed Wapiti myself I skipped all the internet "experts" and scoured the world for all the original research from the researchers and authors who actually were involved at the time. The incorrect term of Elk was coined from the subspecies from Europe which evolved separately after the continents shifted apart, which also included the smaller, related Red deer which was isolated separately also.
I'll continue doing it, and informing myself from those who also did it.

[Billo]

Sorry bud, not correct from the literature I have from a number of sources, including D. Bruce Banwell and other leading academics and experts on these animals.
I was going to put up a few quotes from research literature and to back it up, but frankly I'm tired of wasting my time arguing with people who frankly just want to score points or elevate themselves.
Prior to starting to breed Wapiti myself I skipped all the internet "experts" and scoured the world for all the original research from the researchers and authors who actually were involved at the time. The incorrect term of Elk was coined from the subspecies from Europe which evolved separately after the continents shifted apart, which also included the smaller, related Red deer which was isolated separately also.
I'll continue doing it, and informing myself from those who also did it.

Yes one man's Moose is another man Elk, thanks for pointing out the diff Wapiti, you are indeed technically correct

The Science Behind the Names - The confusion likely arose during the early days of North American settlement when European settlers encountered new animals and applied familiar names to them. They’d heard of “elks” back home and, upon seeing the wapiti, thought it resembled the European variety. Meanwhile, the animal we know as the moose got a different name, often derived from Native American languages. The word “moose” is believed to originate from Algonquian languages.

[Wapiti]

I appreciate the input from both camps, guys, after all we try to do our own research and who knows what's correct, and there's a lot of misinformation out there and it's not deliberate.
F**k me, even some of the internet experts out there are putting out all sorts of skewed facts.
At the end of the day though, it matters little to the enthusiasm of these animals to certain strange individuals like myself.
I do though, recommend the books written from 1965/66, and earlier, on the release of the Wapiti and their biology written by D. Bruce Banwell, David Yerex and Ian Spiers, Jack McKenzie ("Mr. Wapiti" - probably the foremost expert on this subject and its scientific origins and relations to the sub species in Europe, and the other branch of the species, the Red deer).

On the moose in south Fiordland, that was a tragic tale. Also the subject of much BS, the fact is that the release of these animals was couldn't have been in a worse place, one of the wettest places on earth, feed values very deficient for the species needs. Even if a few clung to life and bred, as they did, their terribly poor antler development told the whole story of their mineral and energy deficiencies. But what finished them off was the ever present poachers, all keen to say they shot a moose. Male Micro-penis syndrome that exists to this day.

[Wapiti]

Unexpected thing happened yesterday, I took some of the campers and their kids in the ute to see some newborn calves, and they wanted to see Wapiti.
I was getting out of the cab and overheard one of the fathers telling the kids that the term Elk was strictly wrong, he'd been on a ranch in Montana and had learnt it and knew the correct term and the relationship to mooses etc.
Blew me away, this engineer isn't the closest thing to a hunter and isn't interested in hunting, but he knows more about that than 99.9% of Aussie hunters. Blew me away especially considering this discussion here. Weird.

[bigrich]

Unexpected thing happened yesterday, I took some of the campers and their kids in the ute to see some newborn calves, and they wanted to see Wapiti.
I was getting out of the cab and overheard one of the fathers telling the kids that the term Elk was strictly wrong, he'd been on a ranch in Montana and had learnt it and knew the correct term and the relationship to mooses etc.
Blew me away, this engineer isn't the closest thing to a hunter and isn't interested in hunting, but he knows more about that than 99.9% of Aussie hunters. Blew me away especially considering this discussion here. Weird.

in general mate there's a lot of people that are university educated that think they know everything and their sh!t don't stink

i've got a relative who's very opinionated , who's a retired teacher . man she's painful . tries to tell me all about the firearms situation in this country (among other things) , with absolutely no first hand experience at all . i just laugh and shake my head, best way to keep the peace . the more educated and closer to city centres, the more you find these know-it-alls . university's these days tell people what to think, instead of how to think

on the topic of the roar , unfortunately i've gotta keep my head down for a while . no money for trips . works just starting to pick up now , i've lost about 9-10 weeks income since mid December . by the time i've got the coin it'll be getting cold out your neck of the woods and deer and pigs are noticeably hard to find .
i'll hit the ground running in september ,october i reckon . your lucky to have the lifestyle you do mate , keep it up

[Oldbloke]

Glad work is picking up bigrich.

I hope to get out in about a week once things settle down after Easter. See what happens.

[Wapiti]

I don't know what to say mate, I hope things work out soon.
We're all made of the same goop, it just depends where we want to head and how we travel. When we decide, I'm sick of these whingers telling me what we can't do, and what we should do, we are unchained from other people's "no can do" handbrakes. Usually biased because of someone else's failures. I mean, how dare someone say, I'm not conforming with the boring norm. And they'll f**ken hate you for succeeding too, but that just conforms you're on the tight track. Screw the haters, they eat themselves up. When you do what you want, the chains fall off.
You'll have to let me know where you go hunting mate, winter is the best time.

[bigrich]

Glad work is picking up bigrich.

I hope to get out in about a week once things settle down after Easter. See what happens.

yeah , life has it's ups and downs . i consider myself lucky compared to some . i don't do any travelling over major holidays, too many crazies out and about . a week or two after is great . i went fishing up at rainbow beach , across from frazer island a few years ago, 2 weeks after easter. me and a mate had the place to ourselves . not a sole around . i reckon you need to get out and blow the dust off your 30-06 mate good luck

[bigrich]

I don't know what to say mate, I hope things work out soon.
We're all made of the same goop, it just depends where we want to head and how we travel. When we decide, I'm sick of these whingers telling me what we can't do, and what we should do, we are unchained from other people's "no can do" handbrakes. Usually biased because of someone else's failures. I mean, how dare someone say, I'm not conforming with the boring norm. And they'll f**ken hate you for succeeding too, but that just conforms you're on the tight track. Screw the haters, they eat themselves up. When you do what you want, the chains fall off.
You'll have to let me know where you go hunting mate, winter is the best time.

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