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Finally a Good Weather Window-To the Tops We Go.
Well the summer in Canterbury has been crap, more like wild Spring windy weather that has caused a couple of planned trips to be cancelled. Finally a few days off lined up with a likely weather forecast so my good hunting mate & I headed for the hills on Tues, a fairly stiff climb got us up to where I wanted to camp. An evening glass had us seeing a few hinds with fawns, they all came out just on dark, always nice to watch the little ones playing.
A fairly full moon ensured that we only saw one group out feeding in the morning, a hind, yearling & fawn, the way the wind drift was prevented us from putting a stalk on them as I was keen to take the yearling. It was a beautiful day & we ended up doing what the deer did, laying up for the hot part of the day, napping, cups of tea & solving the worlds problems.
That evening we set ourselves up in a good spot & just before dark our three friends appeared, a bit of a rush job but I finally managed to get a half decent rest in a matagouri bush with the R93 & 250yd shot secured us some meat.
For all the hunting my mate has done he hasn't actually shot a Chamios, he's shot "at"a couple but not connected so at 5am the next morning we were off to another catchment on the tops, a fairly steep 700m climb in the cool morning to get up to 1400m where I hoped some Cham might be, as we were nearing the top we started to see some fresh sign. As we crested the top I said to my mate lets pop over the other side & get off the skyline & find a good spot to start glassing, we had only walked about 20m when in the tussock directly in front of me I saw the top half of a chammy with its head down feeding! I ducked down, got my mate up & said there is one about 25m in front of us, luckily the wind was good & we crawled forward a touch, he had a Little bit of trouble spotting it as it was basically the same colour as the tussock, finally it moved a bit & he picked it up, we couldn't tell whether it was a buck or not but seeing as it was hopefully going to be his first the shot was taken & it was down, one mighty happy hunter, turned out it was a doe so after some photos & I skinned it & will get it tanned, had Cham back steak for dinner last night.
Very happy with my new stug stock for the Blaser, it's dropped 400gm off it.
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