What comes around goes around? Or so the saying goes...abollga's NZ hunt
Abram's a young American working in Australia for only a few weeks. He put a request on the forum asking for advice on hunting in NZ and what the chances were of getting onto animals in a weekend as thats all the time he could afford. I contacted him and told him if he made his way to Queenstown airport, I'd garantee him a look at some animals in our awesome mountains, but couldnt garantee a shot at something - although we'd try our best. He booked his tickets almost immediately!
http://www.nzhuntingandshooting.co.n...zealand-27276/
He arrived in Queenstown at 9am on Saturday, I dropped him back at the airport this morning at 7am, he'll be back in his office now in Sydney working - crazy huh. We headed off in the Landcruiser, grabbed a coffee on the way out of town and in a couple of hours were parked up in a public land spot I know well. We spent the weekend trekking about in the mountains and had two long days hunting for deer and chamois.
Long story short, we covered a heap of country - lots of kms, got pummelled by gale force winds, snowed and sleeted on and fogged in for several hours. But persistance paid off, we saw a few animals, and managed to take a couple home.
Late on Saturday afternoon, not 6 hours after arriving in our country we stumbled onto a group of deer in a huntable spot, and with a perfect shot Abe rolled his first ever red stag - which incidently was also his first antlered deer, having only shot cow elk in the US. Antlers and meat sorted we continued hunting.
We were then fortunate enough to find some chamois after sitting for 6 hours in pea soup fog. We made the most of our few hours of daylight left and we pulled off a epic stalk to secure him his 2nd NZ game animal, a nice chamois doe. Chamois horns and a beautiful winter skin to take home to the US sorted! To say he was stoked was an understatement, as was I with the effort he put in. He earned each animal he shot 100%.
The icing on the cake though, was a awesome looking 10.5 inch chamois buck, which Abe kindly offered me the shot after I said it was the biggest chamois I'd ever seen. He appeared right on dark across a couple of gullies, and a quick sprint to close the gap a sinlge shot dropped him on the spot - almost 15 years to the day since I shot my first chamois buck. He's easily the biggest I have ever seen in the flesh, and likely to be the biggest I'll ever see. He's going on the wall.
It was a pleasure to hunt with someone from the other side of the world, who is as passionate about the mountains and outdoors as me. NZ public land hunting at its best - we truly don't know how lucky we are.
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Needless to say I'll be taking him up on the offer to hunt Elk with him one day in Colorado.
Cheers
Josh.
