Hunting with a lens has an advantage over carrying a rifle, nearly any landowner you ask is only to happy to
let you have a wander through their scrub. Of course, you don’t get to take a feed home but if the freezers
full, who cares.Finally I had a morning off work and escaped the house in
the dark. After a hours’ drive from Feilding I arrived up the farmers
track at Foxton and quickly got the Nikon D750 set up. I knew this
block was going to be dense gorse and flax so the best lens for the
job was my 70-200 f2.8. With this setup you have to get within 40
yards to get anything worth keeping, but it has the advantage of
nailing an image if an animal jumps up a few meters away.
After a 15 minute walk across paddocks I jumped over the
fence into the block. The sun was just cracking dawn, but the
strong easterly breeze I was hoping for was nowhere to be found.
Dreading the noise I’d be making pushing through the flax, I was
still hopeful of getting a couple of images worth keeping with the
amount of sign around.
Within half an hour a patch of flax erupted 15 meters away as a
Sambar stag bolted through a small clearing and vanished. No
more than five minutes later I spotted a big brown hind's arse 20
metres away through the flax. There is no way the auto focus
on any camera is going to work when all you can see is
half the animal through flax. It’ll try to focus on every bit of
flax and scrub between you and it. Set your camera up using ‘Back
Button Focus’. Basically, this makes it very easy to use either manual
focus or auto focus quickly.
As soon as I pushed the shutter the hind raised her head a stared
straight at where I was standing. Staying as still as possible I gotthe image I was after. It's really difficult when using manual
focus to know if you’ve got that tack sharp image of the
animals eye, so take plenty while swinging the focus back in
forth where you know it looks sharp, this way you’ll get one that’s
sharp. She soon started getting nervous and took off through the
flax. But then her curiosity got the better of her and she stopped
about 30 metres away. This time I had to crawl though dense flax to
get a clean line of sight on her. All that was visible of her now was
her head. Sometimes these images are the best as they show the
animal at its natural best, blending in. But there’s nothing like a nice
stag...
Within two hours I’d spotted five hinds and spooked two
stags. Neither stag looked any good, so I wasn’t too bothered
about the blurry images as they bolted away at 90 mile an hour.
After 20 minutes of sneaking along a well-worn track, suddenly
a young Sambar stag walked straight toward me and stopped
dead in his tracks. I had to move a few metres to my right to get a
clear view of him as he stared perfectly down the lens. Within ten
seconds he was gone, but I had exactly what I wanted.
Yes, it is a buzz knowing you could have shot any one of these
animals, that you even got close enough to put an arrow in them
and got the evidence to prove it. Give it a go sometime, you have
something worth hanging on the wall that doesn’t cost a few
thousand to mount. Plus, he’ll look even better next year!It's really difficult when using
manual focus to know if you’ve
got that tack sharp image of the
animals eye, so take plenty while
swinging the focus back and forthA spiker surprised
in the long grassGetting the focus right in these conditions
is an impossible task for auto-focusAugust / September 2019 ~ NZ HUNTER MAGAZINE 33Hunting with a lens has an advantage over carrying a rifle, nearly any landowner you ask is only to happy to
let you have a wander through their scrub. Of course, you don’t get to take a feed home but if the freezers
full, who cares.
Finally I had a morning off work and escaped the house in
the dark. After a hours’ drive from Feilding I arrived up the farmers
track at Foxton and quickly got the Nikon D750 set up. I knew this
block was going to be dense gorse and flax so the best lens for the
job was my 70-200 f2.8. With this setup you have to get within 40
yards to get anything worth keeping, but it has the advantage of
nailing an image if an animal jumps up a few meters away.
After a 15 minute walk across paddocks I jumped over the
fence into the block. The sun was just cracking dawn, but the
strong easterly breeze I was hoping for was nowhere to be found.
Dreading the noise I’d be making pushing through the flax, I was
still hopeful of getting a couple of images worth keeping with the
amount of sign around.
Within half an hour a patch of flax erupted 15 meters away as a
Sambar stag bolted through a small clearing and vanished. No
more than five minutes later I spotted a big brown hind's arse 20
metres away through the flax. There is no way the auto focus
on any camera is going to work when all you can see is
half the animal through flax. It’ll try to focus on every bit of
flax and scrub between you and it. Set your camera up using ‘Back
Button Focus’. Basically, this makes it very easy to use either manual
focus or auto focus quickly.
As soon as I pushed the shutter the hind raised her head a stared
straight at where I was standing. Staying as still as possible I got
the image I was after. It's really difficult when using manual
focus to know if you’ve got that tack sharp image of the
animals eye, so take plenty while swinging the focus back in
forth where you know it looks sharp, this way you’ll get one that’s
sharp. She soon started getting nervous and took off through the
flax. But then her curiosity got the better of her and she stopped
about 30 metres away. This time I had to crawl though dense flax to
get a clean line of sight on her. All that was visible of her now was
her head. Sometimes these images are the best as they show the
animal at its natural best, blending in. But there’s nothing like a nice
stag...
Within two hours I’d spotted five hinds and spooked two
stags. Neither stag looked any good, so I wasn’t too bothered
about the blurry images as they bolted away at 90 mile an hour.
After 20 minutes of sneaking along a well-worn track, suddenly
a young Sambar stag walked straight toward me and stopped
dead in his tracks. I had to move a few metres to my right to get a
clear view of him as he stared perfectly down the lens. Within ten
seconds he was gone, but I had exactly what I wanted.
Yes, it is a buzz knowing you could have shot any one of these
animals, that you even got close enough to put an arrow in them
and got the evidence to prove it. Give it a go sometime, you have
something worth hanging on the wall that doesn’t cost a few
thousand to mount. Plus, he’ll look even better next year!It's really difficult when using
manual focus to know if you’ve
got that tack sharp image of the
animals eye, so take plenty while
swinging the focus back and forthA spiker surprised
in the long grassGetting the focus right in these conditions
is an impossible task for auto-focusAugust / September 2019 ~ NZ HUNTER MAGAZINE 33