Profile Mark McGlashan

A hunt with Mark McGlashan of Poronui never feels stressful or pressured. If the going is tough his approach is ‘let’s try again tomorrow’. Words like laid-back, relaxed, easy-going, friendly, calm, collected and unruffled, all spring to mind when evaluating his personality, while skill-wise he is a guide who consistently produces trophy results for his clients.

He has the kind of personality that people instantly trust, and advice given is listened to.

Mark’s association with Poronui has been an evolutionary one, as he started there in a livestock manager capacity, and has gradually moved more and more into the trophy hunting side of the operation. As he puts it ‘guiding is the type of hunting you can do without pulling the trigger yourself – just as exciting and can be even more of a challenge’. His first guiding hunt was with Kara Watkins, and from that point he realised he had a knack for getting on with, and getting the best out of clients, many who are now firm friends. A successful hunting strategy of his is the ambush, and for this to succeed you must know your environment and quarry inside out.

In terms of deer species, Poronui Estate holds sika, red, fallow, rusa, sambar and elk while outside the park are world renowned free-range sika herd exists. What a place to guide on. Sika hold a special place for McGlashan in terms of hunting, but in terms of herd management he finds red stags very interesting and is a fan of the big rangy, long trophy heads. Of all the deer he finds the Fallow the hardest to guide on due to their flighty nature.

His calibre of choice is a 300 win mag – very accurate, with lots of stopping power and clean kill ability. Up to 200 yards is the distance of choice for most hunters but he enjoys seeing a kill being pulled off from 300 – 440 yards with the right rifle. He particularly enjoys the challenge of guiding on bow hunting.

His own Sako rifle is light, very reliable, a middle price range and has a sensitive trigger.

Tips for clients are layers of light layers of clothing, a good jacket and comfortable boots with good support. He also recommends binos complete with range finder – in Mark’s his case a Swarovski 10 power set hangs around his neck.

Last time I caught up with Mark I gave him a hard time about the fact that while he was a hunting expert in the North Island, his South Island wall mounted chamois was fairly average. I could tell that little jab by me had sunk home. A few months later the attached photograph appeared in my in-tray. He had succeeded in taking a bucket list chamois buck. It’s a cracker.