I shot my first deer, a big red spiker, in 1959 with a fully wooded .303, aperture sights and a military solid round. Hit in the brisket it travelled 50 metres before dropping. This was at about the 20 mile peg on the desert road north of Waiouru. There were plenty of deer within a few metres of the road and a friend coming back south from Taupo at night hit a big stag crossing the road. The stag was killed but so was the light sports car.
The next deer I came across was opposite the Navy wireless station Irirangi, up the hill near the power pylons. I was stalking along the bush edge when I saw a pair of ears in a depression in the tussock 20 metres or so ahead of me. As I crept closer, the ears turned into a hare which bolted away. I stood up, and as I did so, a huge antlered stag also stood up just behind the depression, didn't wait to say hello and went down the slope into the bush like a freight train before I could lift my rifle. I swear that stag was as big as a Hereford bull and the wide wide sweep of his antlers are still burned into my mind's eye today. I wondered, on that day and others, if the .303 would have stopped him, I'll never know.
On that same property I shot other deer but nothing like that big one up by the pylons. This area was home to many big stags and their antlers were black, testimony to the mineral-rich volcanic soil. I struck the same feature among stags around the bases of the volcanoes Mt Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe where I hunted. Soon after that I invested in a new BSA Majestic 30-06 (sans muzzle-brake) and I shared this rifle for 20 years with other .303 rifles that came and went. The BSA featherweight model was beautifully made and kicked like a mule. My friend at Oaro in the South Island used a P14 model and exited a lot of deer goats and pigs, it was a heavy rifle, but very accurate.
About 1986 I bought for a ridiculous price a brand new Airforce issue N0.4 fully wooded unfired Lee Enfield, still packed in grease and oil paper, with bayonet, but then again I resold it for a ridiculous price, how much would that rifle be worth today?.
My last .303 I gave to my BIL when I left home for Australia, it was a typically cut down sporter with both 10 and 5 shot mags, open sights – he occasionally allows me to hold it for nostalgia reasons.
With today's ammunition choices, this calibre will still do the job on deer big and small. In the 1950's NZ Government deer cullers used this rifle as can be found in Barry Crump's excellent book “A Good Keen Man”. I met Crumpy in a Wellington pub back in the early 60's and we had a bit of a yarn about rifles.
Salute to the Lee-Enfield .303, like other classics, may it live forever.
