The second in my Hunting Hawai’i series in which I discuss my first day hunting on Molokai. This was an amazing experience, and an awesome hunt. If you have the time, the spare coin, and the drive to take on an adventure like this, I highly encourage it. If you would like to support the blog, please like, share, and subscribe. Norseman Creative also has a YouTube channel you can follow, as well as a shop for books, merch, and swag to rep your favorite, free pseudo-professional blog.
After my first dog and knife pig hunt on Oahu in 2023, I returned to the jungle with Sonny and Miles one more time to chase pigs. That June hunt ended up being a bust, even though we hiked three more miles and spent two extra hours out in the woods. I did not go home completely empty handed, as the Mountain Apples were ripe and I took home a plastic grocery bag full of them. The fruits were juicy and delicious, but they did draw a ton of ants into my house and weren’t really the point of hiking around the jungle valley for a full day.
I was hooked though, and started looking for further hunting opportunities in Hawai’i. This quickly brought me to looking at hunting Axis Deer on Molokai. After about a year of saving up and researching outfitters and different hunting experiences, I settled on a guide and reached out to reserve my date and time.
Axis Deer, also known as Chital Deer, were introduced to the Hawaiian Islands when they were given to King Kamehameha V as a gift from the Government of Hong Kong in the 1860’s. According to my guide, Brian, the deer were intended to be an alternate source of red meat that were easier to maintain in arid environments compared to the cattle that American businessmen were trying to introduce to Hawaiian ranches. Anyway, a couple dozen deer were dropped off on the Islands of Molokai and Lanai in the 1800s, and then a few were introduced in the 1950s to Maui. With no natural predators, their populations have exploded, and today they are plentiful on all three islands. By “plentiful,” I mean they outnumber people 10:1 on Molokai.
When a species of animal is introduced to an environment, they often cause problems with the local ecosystem. A classic example are the feral hogs that destroy portions of Texas, or the feral goats that roamed freely around the ranch I hunted on when I was stationed there. Both species cause damage not only to the landscape, but also to the populations of native animals that they now can outcompete for food, water, and shelter. The Hawaiian Islands are all unique, incredibly sensitive ecosystems, and the Axis Deer have completely overrun parts of Molokai.
One of the things that was important to me when picking a guide and hunting service on Molokai was choosing a guide that offered some sort of “conservation” hunt. In my mind, a “conservation” hunt is a hunt where we would mostly target the female deer, the does. I was completely willing to shoot a male deer, a stag, but shooting the does has a greater ecological impact. If you shoot a mature stag, the next in line steps in to take his place mating with his harem of does, and you haven’t accomplished much ecologically speaking. If you shoot a mature doe, however, you remove more breeding potential from the ecosystem, and a younger doe cannot take her place until she is mature enough. Or so the theory goes. In reality, with 70,000 – 80,000 of these deer on one little island, you really don’t make much of an impact with a rifle and a couple bullets. A lot of little impacts do add up though.
Another important factor in choosing a guide was their ties to the local community. Molokai can be a bit, shall we say, aggressive in their resistance to change, their attitude towards outsiders, and protecting their way of life. The last thing I need is some jackass who doesn’t understand the culture, someone who is only there for a paycheck. Molokai is a small island, and I figured if I hired the wrong guide, it could get me blacklisted from Molokai’s hunting scene.
This all led me to Brian of Kailea Outdoors. Brian came recommended by a friend who has been around the fishing and hunting scene in Hawai’i for a few years. I shot Brian a message on Instagram, we exchanged numbers, and Brian gave me a call a few days later. After talking the basics of the hunt over with Brian, I decided to make a Molokai Axis Deer hunt a birthday present to myself.
With a few months of lead time before the hunt, I had time to check out flights, shop for necessary equipment, and try to convince some folks to come with me. At first, I had two people coming with me, but due to several travel SNAFUs, one guy had to drop out. This left me and my Lieutenant, Bret, in my hunting party. As a 2nd Lieutenant, Bret normally wouldn’t have the loose change to throw at a last minute hunting trip, but he had spent a month earning TDY per diem to soften the blow. Plus, it was a hunt of a lifetime, he just couldn’t pass the opportunity up.
During the weeks leading up to the hunt, I agonized over my gear. There is only one airline that flies into Molokai, Mokulele Airlines, and they have a few restrictions on baggage. I knew that I was only guaranteed two check bags of 50lbs, and could maybe get a third check bag if the rest of the passengers didn’t check much baggage. With these luggage restrictions in mind, I packed my trusty rucksack with the bare minimum clothing and gear, stuffed a set of knives and soft, insulated totes inside a soft Yeti cooler. When the time came to fly, I even opted to leave my rifle behind in favor of ensuring I could bring as much meat home as possible. I would just borrow one of Brian’s rifles to use during the hunt.
Mokulele Airlines operates a fleet of “puddle jumpers,” small, propeller driven airplanes that fit less than a dozen adults. These small aircraft require carefully balanced loads, which meant the passengers and the luggage had to be precisely weighed and boarded in a specific seating arrangement. I was the last passenger to board, which meant I also got to help the pilot close and latch the rear door. Bret was unable to get a seat on my flight, and would fly in later that Friday morning.
The flight from Honolulu to Molokai was short, landing ahead of schedule. Minutes after I was on the ground, I had my bags, and was ready for Brian to pick me up by the airport curb. Brian arrived mere minutes later, and he started explaining the game plan for the hunt as I threw my gear in the back of his Tacoma.
I landed early enough that Friday morning that I was able to hunt Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, with a return to Honolulu mid-day on Monday. While Brian drove across Molokai to the small town of Kaunakakai, he explained the general philosophy of hunting on the island. With so many deer, the native ecosystem is struggling to keep up. The Axis Deer love to eat the native plants, leaving many of the invasive species of grasses and other plants to flourish in their place. As a result, Molokai’s ecosystem might be irreparably altered. Our goal for the three days and three nights was to take as many Axis off the landscape as we could manage.
After a quick stop to have breakfast and pick up provisions, Brian brought me to his house/base of operations. We had a few hours until Bret landed, so we took our time getting ready to head out on our first hunt. I met Brian’s nephew/apprentice, Blaze, who readied the Can-Am UTV that would be our primary means of transportation to the hunting areas. Brian asked me if I wanted to wait for Bret, to which I replied “Hell no,” so Brian handed me his lightweight .300 Winchester Short Magnum (WSM) rifle and I hopped in the UTV for Blaze to bring me to the hunting area.
Blaze dropped me off in our hunting area, and pointed me uphill with the suggestion that I just keep walking until I find a good spot to sit. “You’ll know it when you see it,” he told me, so I hoisted the rifle and my ruck. Stepping off into the bush, I was reminded of hunting in West Texas. The grasses were tall and yellow, the trees low, scraggly, and sharp. The main difference is that if I looked downhill, I could see the Pacific Ocean a few miles away and Maui just across the narrow sea channel. If I looked uphill, I was confronted with the peaks of the mountain range that splits Molokai in Northern and Southern halves.
My objective that first outing was not necessarily to start shellacking deer right away. For one thing, I had a whole weekend to hunt. For another, I knew I was going to have to carry whatever meat I harvested down the mountain by myself. The goal of this first outing was to scout the area and get a feel for how the Axis Deer moved about their territory. I figured I would only see a couple deer while I stomped around the bush, if I saw any at all.
In the past several hunting outings in Minnesota, I have probably seen less than ten deer total. Hunting in the Northwoods is mostly a game of freezing your ass off while praying something, anything walks in front of your stand. Within twenty minutes of getting out of the UTV, I was sweating my ass off and I had seen more than two dozen deer running all over the mountain side. I wasn’t even looking for them.
Pushing up the mountain, I planned to find a good spot to sit and just watch deer with my binoculars until it was time to meet Bret and Blaze back on the UTV path where Blaze left me. I settled in, and after several hours of seeing no more deer, Blaze called to let me know it was time to come down. When I stood up from the hide site I had been in for the afternoon, an Axis Doe jumped up from her own hide site about fifteen yards in front of me and bolted down into the draw I had been watching.
I slowly picked my way back down the mountain to meet Bret and Blaze, and when I realized they hadn’t seen me coming down, I decided to sneak up on them. With a stealthy approach, I am sure I startled them, but they both played it off pretty well. After I put my ruck in the UTV and climbed in, Blaze drove us to another spot to look for deer. Since I had spent the afternoon watching for deer, I figured it to be Bret’s turn to take a crack at it.
We saw a few deer, but all of them were starting their evening migration back up into the mountainside forest. Our plan was to chase them up there that evening, but first we had to head back to Brian’s house to pick him up, along with our nighttime equipment. Piling into the UTV, Blaze drove us down the mountain, watching for Axis deer along the way.
His vigilance paid off, as I we spotted a small herd off about a dozen deer milling around about 150 yards away. I let Bret take the first crack at them, and he dropped a small doe in her tracks. The rest of the deer scattered, leaving me no shot. In the late afternoon heat, we had to process the animals quickly to make sure the meat didn’t spoil, so I wasn’t all that motivated to shoot another deer and risk wasting meat.
I was a bit surprised when we got up to the deer. Up until that point, I really wasn’t sure how big Axis Deer were in comparison to the Minnesota Whitetail Deer I was used to. Bret’s deer wasn’t a good representation of a mature doe, as she was probably about a year old and not yet full grown. She was the type of deer we were after on our Conservation Hunt, so a victory all the same.
With our first deer on the ground, we took a couple pictures, and then Blaze set about processing the Axis Deer. I have never seen someone skin and de-bone an animal so fast. Blaze finished bagging up Bret’s meat within mere minutes and we were on our way back to Brian’s to rinse the meat, put it in Ziplocs, and stuff it in the massive chest freezer at Brian’s house.
Our first afternoon hunt was over, and we were already successful, but that wasn’t the end of our Friday hunt. Hunting Axis at night was Brian’s primary method of controlling their population in the areas he managed, and I was about to get a taste of adventure that I had not entirely bargained for.
Stay tuned for more! If you are already hooked, feel free to hit up Brian Gomes of Kailea Outdoors on Instagram (@kailea_outdoors). Any support you can toss my way is appreciated. Check out the Shop for merch, and if you are looking for gun parts or any other oddities, check out the Scratch & Dent section!
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