Stag Attacks Aircraft

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31333, 1 April 1967, Page 14

Stag Attacks Aircraft

(N.Z. PreSs dM-ociation) INVERCARGILL, Mar. 31. An angry stag took to a topdressing aircraft and gave the pilot and the loaderdriver some nasty moments on an airstrip at Nokomai station, Northern Southland, early on Thursday night. “We could hardly believe our eyes,” the pilot, 28-year-old Mr S. Bickerstaff, of Mossbum, said today. He and Mr C. Campbell, aged 18, had returned to the strip after the day’s flights and were sitting in the cabin, the engine idling, when the deer made its dramatic appearance. It went straight at the machine and, growling and roaring, began butting tne port wing. Mr Campbell stepped out from the other side of the fairly new Cessna Agwagon and went to move around to the deer. What the spiker missed in age, it more than compensated for in savagery, as it charged towards Mr Campbell. He retreated to the cabin in time. The deer then lost more of

its fur in denting the metal skin of the other wing and the tailplane. Messrs Bickerstaff and Campbell decided to fly to the homestead a mile and a half away for rifles. As the Cessna sped down the strip the deer gave chase. With Messrs B. and A. Hore, of Nokomai Station, they returned minutes later, coming in directly over the stag which was feeding in a turnip paddock adjoining the strip. The machine had barely

stopped when again the animal charged, leaping a 4fthigh barbed-wire fence. Alongside the plane, the Hores pumped three shots into the deer, and dropped it about 20 yards off.

It was an episode unlikely to be forgotten. ‘Tvo never come across anything like it before," said a flabbergasted Mr W. Hewat, of Hewat Aviation, owner of the aircraft' Although the aircraft hgd a number of dents, scratches and a bashed navigation light it was serviceable. .