My fiancé and I had a great trip to NZ this spring and I'm just getting a chance to share...
I did a bunch of research on the hunt ahead of time and intended to DIY for tahr and try to get lucky on a stag on department of conservation (DOC) ground. After a bit of research and conversations with folks over there, it became clear that the chances of finding red deer on DOC land were somewhat slim. I started searching for a ranch (station) that would let us hunt free range and we settled on Mesopotamia Station on the south island.
They are a family operated farm and keep ~7k ewes, ~300 cow/calf pairs and probably 500 of red stags that are used to provide soft antler/velvet for the asian market. That was all totally foreign to me, but it's a big industry in that area and neat to listen to the farm stags roaring all night. In addition to the farm, they have a helicopter service to transport tourists, hunters, biologists etc. up into the southern alps. It's a cool operation and I am really glad we used them instead of going DIY.
I went through the process to bring my own firearm, which was a hassle, but not too bad. Hunting licenses are just printed off at home- no limits or fees.
We ended up killing 3 stags and 2 tahr in 5 days of hunting. We were not going to be too picky about our animals, we really just wanted representative animals and a cool experience. My tahr has wandered down low enough for us to sneak on him from a trail. We decided to have the heli transport us up to the top for a day of tahr hunting for Brook and had a GREAT experience with that. There were plenty of animals, nearly every ridge had a few hanging around, but this is big, steep country and spotting them doesn't necessarily mean we could get to them. We ended up sneaking on a group of 6 bedded bulls and after a couple hours of waiting/watching she made a great 200m shot on the biggest of the bunch.
We did not bring home any meat. We ate some while we were there, but most of it is used to feed the ~12 working dogs on the ranch. We brought the antlers and horns (skull capped and cleaned) home as luggage and dropped the capes off at a local taxidermist to be tanned and shipped.
