0430 is an early wake up compared to most of my winter hunts but today I was taking my son Ryan on a tahr hunt and wanted to be well up the hill as the darkness evolved into daylight.
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One cool thing seen was a line of about 30 starlink satellites cruising across the sky as the sun was starting to brighten the eastern horizon.
In the planned spot right on daylight we hid in the scrub and started scanning the landscape for any sign of animals.
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Nothing seen we moved over the ridge and glassed the other side. After a few minutes a couple of tahr were seen across on the opposite face. With a bit more looking the group grew to five animals.
We decided to leave these ones for now and see if there was anything closer on our side of the valley. A couple of hundred metres further we could see the whole basin and only saw one red way off in the distance so decided to pursue the tahr seen earlier.
Snaking our way down the ridge in the tall tussock we moved closer and closer while periodically checking through the binos to ensure the tahr were calm and still feeding.
At one point they got very nervous about something but they weren't looking in our direction so we sat quietly until they returned to their morning feast.
A little further and we arrived at a large rock we had decided would be close enough and got set up for a shot. Had forgotten the range finder but estimated the range around 200m.
With a nice rest and Ryan watching on the binos I lined up on one of the nannies but it moved behind some scrub and I could only see one other animal. Moving the crosshairs, I squeezed off the shot and the tahr dropped then rolled down the steep face a few metres.
Down the face, we crossed the creek, dropped our packs and climbed the 50 odd metres up to where the tahr had come to rest. It wasn't till now that we confirmed it was a young bull which wasn't our preferred choice but it was still meat on the deck.
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Rolling and dragging it back to our packs we worked through the butchering with me showing Ryan how to break it down, he had a go at skinning, and we boned out the legs to save some weight on the walk out.
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A quick lunch while the meat cooled, we then packed up and walked up over the ridge and back out to the truck. Arrived home at 3.30, 11 hours after waking up.
Best part of the day was when I asked Ryan how he rated the hunt and he replied "10 out of 10. Best hunt I've ever been on "
