From early Friday, about 150 hunters, in 52 teams, stalked Otago's rural landscape for "the big three" - boar, red deer and fallow deer.
Hunters and their prey had to be at the Dunedin tavern by 3pm yesterday to qualify at weigh-in.
Dunedin's Scott Kunac, owner of Allan Millar's Hunting and Fishing, led the overall winning team, Millar's Killers.
It boasted the heaviest combined weight (252kg) of a red deer stag, boar and fallow deer.
The stag weighed 131kg alone and was the heaviest red deer overall.
Jimmy and Brendon Tisdall's 80kg boar was the largest at weigh-in, while Dwayne and Quentin Young had the heaviest fallow deer (63kg).
Mornington Tavern owner and competition organiser David "Murdoch" Miskimmin said the hunt mostly went well, although a hunter did lose five dogs in the freezing upper Taieri River.
Such an occurrence was "rare", Mr Miskimmin said.
He inherited the annual hunt from former Mornington Tavern publicans.
It was the largest such competition in Otago, Mr Miskimmin said.
"It's undisputed and this year the quality was amazing.
"The stags were bigger than normal and some of the tusks on the boars were pretty impressive as well," he said.
