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Tahr, Awaparas a goose and almost a couple hinds
My cousin Jamie and i have been trying to go for a Tahr hunt for months now but we are share milkers and everything has to align before we can go hunting together. Time of year, staffing and work load all have to work out. Its become a bit of a joke, we have set a date 4 times previously and something has come up each time. This time was no exception. Luckily the issue worked its self out and we on our way a day later.
After final instructions to my staff we were off to the Mt Cook area. We arrived at the car park at about 4pm and went about sorting our kit. Jamie insisted on bringing a doz speights cans even tho I informed him that we have a 3.5 hour walk up a river bed and that the 3 and a half extra kg might be best left in the truck! So Jamie had the cans and i had the vodka and we were off.
I had packed the food and was worried that i had relied on camp meat too much but turns out there was no need. 30 mins into our walk we come across a mob of feral sheep with one shot from Jamies 308 we had 2 sheep on the deck.
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We took meat off the lamb and carried on and after scaring off a couple groups of geese we thought lamb and goose stew might be nice so the 308 took down some more camp meat.
We arrived at the hut at about 8ish, absolutely fucked (no other way to explain it). luckily we had some lamb steaks and speights to revive us.
The next morning there was low cloud so we sidled along just below cloud level looking into what bluffs we could see.
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After a couple hours of walking and glassing i looked down and saw a mob of 30 Tahr staring up at us 160m away. Bloody hell! needless to say Jamie got his first Tahr. The Bulls had long gone so he had to settle for a nanny.
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Later that day i knocked a nanny off a bluff at 500yds (all the practice is paying off). We had seen over 50 nannys and taken one each and as we had no interest in tagging nanny after nanny the next day we headed down the valley to try and shoot a Deer.
We got to where we thought there would be a deer and waited until dusk to move through the area within 30 min of stalking jamie pointed out a hind up on the hill 160m away. Boom! went my braked 7mmRM. Missed Fuck. theres another one Boom! Fuck missed again?? I later figured out that the scope was still dialed in for 500 yards. Lesson learnt!
This was a very successful hunt by our standards. Both of us are self tought hunters and its taken a few years to find good spots and learn how and when to hunt we are still to shoot a deer but i think that is coming very soon! Anyway dont think we could have handled the excitement of shooting a Tahr an Awapara ram (lamb) a goose and a deer in one trip. Next time maybe im looking forward to the next few months!
