Just met up with and old work mate here in Townsville who has access to a few properties. One of them a cane farm with pigs and the other has chital on it.

What is the season there?

Here in NZ we hunt year round but the roar is from mid March to early June - depending on Sika or Red and also the area etc.

We hunt meat animals from Nov. Peak summer from mid Jan gets hot until April.

Winter hunting is different - June to Aug. I stay home by the fire!

Sure hope it works out to be a great deal for you Tony. Get out there and let us know how it works out.
George

Its the dry season up here at the moment. Cool nights and days around 27ish. I believe the chital don't have a season and you can find some in hard antler and velvet. Anyone know for sure?

chital seem to cast at any time , so have hard antler at anytime. They do have a set mating season though , generally around January/Feb/March , I think.

Chital have to be the prettiest deer on the planet.

And tastiest.

quote:

Originally posted by Bakes:
Its the dry season up here at the moment. Cool nights and days around 27ish. I believe the chital don't have a season and you can find some in hard antler and velvet. Anyone know for sure?

I watched a group of 18 stags one day.
Some had only just cast, some were in soft velvet and some were rubbing out.
Generally speaking, if hunting between March and end of August something in the order of 0ver half the mature stags will be rubbed out and hard. There will be exceptions to that rule as well.

Regarding rutting, I found a quite active rut around early to mid Feb another minor rut around end of August and yet another, more prominent beginning early November.
The Feb rut was, for me, my favourite.

To hear a number of Chital stags in full rut calling, in full voice, challenging rivals, is one of those sounds that warms the heart of the hunter.

You don't want to be too late hunting in either of the rut periods.
Chital fight real hard and bust up antlers quickly.
I watched two mature 30" stags fighting one day.
15 mins after they started there was barely enough bone left for knife handles !

Best of luck.