By Jay Pinsky
Most writers take pride in their leads. But the best one for the story of my red deer stag hunt in New Zealand was written by Charles Dickens in 1859:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness …”
Indeed, it was. In those early hours, optimism and excitement flooded me, I wasn’t in France, and there certainly wasn’t a revolution raging on the South Island. But by the end of my first day in New Zealand, the excitement had shifted to uncertainty and tension, and Dickens’s words fit my hunt perfectly.
Encounter
Within the first hour of the hunt, my guide, Bre Lewis, and I closed within forty yards of a magnificent red deer stag. Bre, a seasoned archer herself, had taken me to a ravine where red deer fed along the timbered slopes. The weather, wind, and terrain all favored us.
I was ready. Before arriving at Glen Dene, I’d passed Bre’s archery proficiency test. My arrows stacked into a golf ball-sized bullseye at forty yards. Months of daily practice prepared me for this moment: shooting at every angle, in every condition, out to sixty yards. I thought I had covered every situation. Almost.
We slipped into position as the stags fed uphill. At forty-three yards, a break in the brush gave us a narrow shooting lane. Bre whispered, “They’re right there. Two stags. We want the first one… no, take the second.”
I drew, settled, and waited for the shot.
The Shot
The stag never stopped. In my mind, Bre’s whistle froze him. He kept climbing.
I released. The arrow flew true, exactly where I aimed, except the stag had already taken a step. Instead of slipping behind his shoulder, my arrow buried deep into his left hip.
I hadn’t missed. I’d done something far worse. My stomach sank, but there was no time to sulk. Bre, calm and professional, shifted gears. She always carries a backup rifle on archery hunts, a Blaser R8 in .308 Winchester. She looked at me and said, “This is now a rifle hunt.”
The Pursuit
We trailed heavy blood through the brush. We climbed higher and higher, until it vanished. When we looked up, we saw him on the very tip-top of the mountain.
Red deer don’t belong there. That’s where tahr or chamois live. But my stag, wounded and defiant, had climbed where no stag should – especially with carbon arrow in its hips. From that moment, he became the Tahr Stag.
The climb to him was brutal: steep rock, loose footing, and too much open space. At 300 yards, we stopped. He was sky-lined on the peak, untouchable. One wrong move and we’d lose him over the back side forever. So, we waited.
The Vigil
For six hours, we lay on that mountainside. I wasn’t comfortable, but I dared not complain given the situation. We couldn’t push him. We could only wait for gravity, fatigue, or mercy to bring him down.
The stag finally began to move. He half-crawled, dragging his ruined hindquarters, inching toward the scree slope below. Each agonizing step deepened my shame and helplessness. No hunter worth his salt can watch an animal suffer without feeling the weight of responsibility. He finally reached the rocks, and he paused broadside. The wait was over.
The Shot of Mercy
I contorted into a pretzel to get stable, rested the Blaser on my pack, and squeezed the trigger. The Hornady bullet struck true. Relief and sorrow hit me at once as the Tahr Stag collapsed, and with him went more than six hours of suffering, his and mine. This wasn’t redemption. It was mercy. And I owed him that.
Reflection
Hunting teaches humility in ways nothing else can. Preparation, practice, and planning matter, but wild animals don’t follow scripts. A single step changed my clean kill into a long, painful lesson.
The strongest and bravest red deer I’ll ever know didn’t fall to my perfect arrow. He fell because I had the courage, with Bre’s guidance, to finish what I started and not let him suffer. That realization brought a bittersweet sense of closure, with pride and sadness intertwined. The mountain reminded me: hunting is never about perfection. It’s about responsibility.
And that day in New Zealand, Dickens was right. It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times.
