Dr. James Kroll watches for whitetails from atop a sand dune on New Zealand’s Stewart Island. Photo by Gordon Whittington.

Wave after wave rolled up from the sea, each crest running far up the sand before dissolving in a spread of pearly foam. For miles in either direction there wasn't a person, boat or condominium in sight . . . only the timeless meeting of land and water.

It was the sort of scene that burrows deep into your memory bank and refuses to leave. But as spectacular as the view was, I dared not admire it for long. Just above the water hung a pale sun only minutes from keeping its daily appointment with the western horizon. Time to turn my gaze back to the quest that had brought me from the other side of the world to the top of this windswept sand dune.

Not long after resuming my inspection of the ridge before me, I sensed something about it had changed. There, in a small opening between two trees: a speck of orange. It was small enough to have easily missed before, but so bright I felt certain I hadn't. What else could it be other than the coppery summer coat of a whitetail?

Ordinarily, my next move would have been to simply glass the deer. But in this case, I didn't care whether the animal was big or small, buck or doe. All that mattered was that it was a whitetail, which meant I was going to try my best to shoot it.

As Dave McCarlie and Dr. James Kroll trained their own optics on the spot, I brought my Thompson/Center Encore into position and waited for a clear shot through the foliage. Even with my Swarovski scope cranked to 9X, the deer looked tiny. I put the cross hairs a tad high and fired.

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At the shot, the deer briefly moved out of sight. Then it calmly reappeared in the opening. I'd apparently missed clean. Throwing in another round, I once more settled in for a shot. This time I literally brought part of the forest down; the 7mm bullet smashed through a limb above the animal, sending the branch down with a crash. The deer jumped out of sight.

Well, so much for showing off my shooting skills. In disgust, I reloaded and gave the ridge a token follow-up look. Just beneath the opening where the deer had been stood another one!

Holding lower this time, I fired again. When my eye returned to the scope, I couldn't find the deer, but the dull thud of a bullet's impact told me this shot had found its mark. Sure enough, the deer had died in its tracks. I'd just shot a 5 1/2-year-old doe with a live weight of around 80 pounds.

Whenever a hunt comes off as planned, it's a happy occasion, and few whitetail hunts have ever taken more planning than this one. Later, back at camp, we celebrated with fresh tenderloin seared in salty butter. It was some of the best venison I've ever had, and the deer that provided it will always be one of my most cherished trophies.

Why such a fuss over an 80-pound doe? Time and place had everything to do with it. The time was late March 2005, and the place was Stewart Island, New Zealand. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the arrival of whitetails in the South Pacific, James and I had traveled nearly halfway around the planet. Not only had we now seen these deer in their adopted home, but we actually had DNA: genetic material we hoped would lead to a better understanding of the most isolated whitetail herd on earth.

It's rare to find a herd that originated from just a handful of deer and hasn't been diluted with other bloodlines since, whether from later stockings or eventual mixing with another local herd. By virtue of the small number of whitetails stocked in each location in New Zealand, as well as their having been separated from each other and other whitetails for a century, these herds are great examples of genetic isolation. Roughly 30 generations of whitetails now have lived in the South Pacific, and we were eager to see how they had adapted to the land -- and, at the same time, the land to them.

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