PIG HUNTER HIT BY 303 BULLET

Taupo Times, Volume IV, Issue 165, 25 March 1955, Page 1

PIG HUNTER HIT BY 303 BULLET

Mishap Near Tauhara At 11 a.ru. on Sunday, March /20, Messrs Peter Hay and John Stebbing, of Taupo, were pig. hunting about eight miles east of Tauhara Mountain, close to the boundary of the Afforestation Proprietary's plantation. They had killed a pig, and were kneeling down cleaning it. with their two horses standi ng nearby, saddled. Suddenly one of the horses reared up and fell to the ground. Mr Hay saw his companion with his hand to his head and realising that he had been hit by a bullet jumped to his feet, put his hands above his head and shouted out to a party of stalkers, whom he could then see, that his mate had been hitThe stalkers, Messrs R. Rrooking and Peter Flavell, employed on the Land Department's Tauhara TVlock, and two companions, at once hurried to the scene. Mr Stebbing had been hit by a .303 bullet near the left temple. He was brought to Taupo in Messrs Brooking and FlavelTs vehicle and received medical attention,' the bullet, which had lodged near the eye, being removed. Mr Stebbing obviously had a miraculous escape from death. It is understood that Messrs Brooking and Flavell and their companions saw in a gully, several liundred yards away, something brown in the lieavy five-foot scrub, with which the locality is thickly covered. The liarty all judged it to be a deer. Both men fired. The horse was killed instantly, one bullet going through its head and the other behind the shoulder.