The first day on our Lanai axis deer hunt was a success.

[IdahoCTD]

My buddy shot the buck and I followed up with a doe. We were done by 7am. We had lunch in town after we got some more ice and checked out another part of the island this evening but saw mostly mouflon sheep. Tomorrow we will hunt the same side we hunted this morning. I have a buck tags and my buddy has a doe tag. They make you buy a doe before you can buy a buck tag to try and control the population.

The picture upload was taking forever so I'll add them tonight when I get to my computer.

 

[longrangehunter]

Very cool, good luck on your next trip out!

 

[DrMike]

Excellent! That is great to hear. Looking forward to the pictures.

 

[IdahoCTD]

I got my buck this morning about 9am and we are head back to the truck with it now.

 

[JD338]

Congratulations. Looking forward to seeing your pictures

JD338

 

[IdahoCTD]

Here are the pictures.

 

[Elkman]

Those are gorgeous, congratulations, outstanding.

 

[salmonchaser]

Beautiful deer, well done


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[FOTIS]

Nice

 

[Blkram]

Very nice!

What rifle and cartridge?

 

[DrMike]

They are sure a pretty animal, that's for sure.

 

[IdahoCTD]

It's my 300wsm loaded with 215 Bergers. It's built on a Remington 700 LA with a center feed Wyatt mag box so I can load them long. It has a 26" Brux #5 barrel in a McMillan Game Scout stock. I've used it pretty exclusively for the last 3 years. My buck was shot at 330yds and my doe was 240yds. My buddies buck was shot at 240yds as well. He used a 300wm and 215 Bergers. He dropped his buck and I shot the doe right after that on the first morning. The cool thing about muzzle brakes is the animals have a harder time determining where the shot came from. So they jump at my buddies shot and ran about 10-20 yards to the left and stood there. When I shot the doe then they all took off. The does weigh about 80lbs on the hoof and the bucks are about double that so we were fairly over gunned but it did the job.

When I come back I'll probably tote something smaller. If our actions we had on order would of shown up we would of been shooting 6.5-300wm's instead. There are plenty of chances to shoot long if a person wants to but the wind is constantly blowing, and sometimes it's 20+mph. We actually got fairly lucky that it was cloudy almost the whole time or I would of probably melted. It's HOT! 80+ degrees and 90+% humidity is pretty rough conditions when it's in the 50's at home and I hate humidity anyway. I'll still come back and do it again though.

We camped on the island and I think it helped that we didn't drive in in the dark. People thought we were crazy for camping since you can drive about anywhere in under an hour. The island is only 10 miles wide and about 16 or 18 miles long with a estimated 20,000 deer. The roads are pretty rough and mostly dirt everywhere. The access to the northern most part of the island was cut off due to all the rain the last week and the resulting mud. Last Monday it rained for about 8 hours straight with 1 to 2" falling every hour and Wed. it rained pretty hard for about 4 hours over night. It's red clay type dirt that reminds me of western WY. It's gooey and slick.

 

[hunter24605]

A great memory for sure! Well done..The scenery itself would make the trip worthwhile for me.

 

[rodell]

How did you handle the meat in those temps?

Beautiful animals, for certain.

 

[IdahoCTD]

We bought two ice chest on Maui before we took the ferry over to Lanai. We had ice in one and dry goods in the other. When we shot the deer we boned them out immediately and put both in the one ice chest with the ice. Then we headed back to town to get more ice. Unfortunately the plastic bags we put the 2 deer from the first day in leaked and got the meat wet. We had them in game bags and put them in plastic bags to try and keep them dry in the ice chest. So I think we will lose at least part of the meat from my buddies buck. I haven't smelled my doe yet but they are both in the freezer of the condo we are staying in and should be frozen solid before we fly home tonight. We couldn't find block ice on Lanai and will try to find some on Maui before we head over next time we come. Cubed ice doesn't last long here and goes even faster when you put hot deer meat on it. Frozen water bottles or something similar might work just as good as block ice. We might even check into someone with a cooler on the island to hang the deer we shoot the first day next time. We did meet a couple guys from Maui over there that could probably help us with that.

The locals were extremely nice. The head of security for both Four Seasons resorts on Lanai gave us a ride to town where we rented the truck. BTW none of the "normal" rental car places allow you to rent a Jeep to use for hunting. It say so on their web pages. Just a little fun fact.....about 97% of Lanai is owned by the CEO of Oracle, Larry Ellison. He leases part of it to the state for hunting and the rest is for guided or trespass hunts. The island use to be a pineapple plantation owned by Dole and Larry Ellison bought it to try and make it a "green" tourist attraction. The crazy thing is there is plastic pipe and left over plastic sheets buried in the dirt everywhere the pineapples use to be grown. It amazes me the environmentalist haven't come unglued over that. The private land hunts are conducted year around and the state hunts for deer start with 8 days straight of archery in Feb followed by muzzleloader and a youth hunt then 9 weekends of center fire. I heard the access fee is 300.00 per day on the private land hunts but don't know that for sure. Almost all of the state managed land on all of Hawaii is holiday and weekend hunting only. Which seems weird to me since the deer population on Maui is estimated at 40,000 and they are trying to reduce that due to crop damage. I watched a YouTube video with a rancher saying "if I had four less deer on my place I could feed one more cow". Also because the amount of days to hunt is so short most people hunt for a buck first and not many shoot does. That kind of defeats their plan to make you buy a doe tag before you can buy a either sex tag for population control. A normal weekend sees 200+ hunters with a average success rate of 38%. My buddy and I ran 75% filling 3 of 4 tags. If I had another doe tag I could of filled it with a doe out of the same group my buck was in. My buddy was too slow on the draw to find them before they bugged out for good.

 

[sask boy]

Thank you for the post and photos :wink:.
They are beautiful animals for sure, I hope that you were able to save some of the meat to enjoy when you got back stateside .

Blessings,
Dan

 

[IdahoCTD]

My buddy is into picture enhancement. Here is my buck enhanced.

 

[Gunner46]

I've done that hunt twice and it was a blast both times ! Did you go thru the lottery, or do the plantation hunt?

 

[IdahoCTD]

It was the state lottery. It's actually not super expensive if you were to fly straight to Lanai City and camp out. I bet I could do it for 1500.00 if you could split the truck rental and gun case fee on the airlines with a buddy. It cost 135.00 one way and 235.00 on the way home just for the gun case.