5 Attachment(s)
Who got the last laugh? You decide
We went away for a short family farm trip the other day. We had permission to camp on a farm and shoot whatever pesties we encountered. This was an experiment to see whether a longer trip in the bush would work.
We went to the farm after an early dinner, with plans for me to go looking for deer and do some reconnaissance for future hunts. I headed off up the middle ridge of the farm with my eldest son, 11, while my wife and the two youngest set up camp in the edge of some pine forest.
Halfway up the ridge I spotted far off a mob of 7 goats at the top of a small cliff. After a brief discussion where my son reminded me a goat in the hand is worth 2 deer in the bush I consulted my topo map app: 300 metres away or so. Because I'm not on the same level yet as @Flyblown shooting goats out to 600m, we dropped down the ridge to get some manuka scrub between us and the goats to conceal us as we got closer.
My son was very excited. He's been out on a couple of short bush hunts with me but has never seen any animals. So seeing a mob of goats amped him up and his chatter, copious under normal circumstances, increased.
As we went we talked about avoiding being skylined and how quick motions of the head, arms, waving hands etc are much more likely to be seen than slow movements. At last we got close to the edge of the gully separating yes send the goats and dropped to a crouch, then bellies.
Consulting my app I estimated we were 200m away at the same height more or less and they hadn't seen us. Game time! With the rifle zeroed at 100m I was confident that a 2.5" high aiming point would be fine, even though I've not shot past 100m before.
I cleared a shooting lane in the long grass, lined up just in front of the front leg of a small white nanny, told my son to watch the shot, and fired. Success! No white nanny to be seen.
Hmm, "where did it fall?" I asked my son. He admitted he had his fingers in his ears, worried about the blast. I assured him that the suppressor in the open field would be totally different to unsuppressed rifles at the range. "With the recoil I lose sight of the target when I fire. That's why you're supposed to watch thorough the binos." I told him to watch while I lined up on a brown nanny, same place. Miss!
The goats wised up and ran up the hill behind them. Glumly we counted them as they disappeared over a ridge 300m away. Still, there were only 7, so the white nanny was somewhere. We spent the next 5 minutes flashing the area including down the bottom of the cliff. Nothing.
"Let's go over there and have a look around. She could have run behind a bush." So off we went. Nothing. We couldn't even find the cliff once we got over there. Everything looked so different.
Lesson 1: Memorize key landmarks before setting off to look. (More on that later).
Then my son spotted what looked like the same mob on a ridge nearby. 140m away. Much easier. Then I spotted the small white nanny. So I had missed her after all. Getting a good rest, I lined up same place on the nanny, fired, then before the rest of the mob reacted, dropped a medium black billy close to her. There were a couple of cries then silence. "You got them Dad! I saw the white one fall down!"
Fever pitch of excitement.
The light failing fast, we scrambled down the spur we were on and up the side of the other ridge. 2 goats down! The trip back was full of conversation, punctuated by repeated thanks from my son for taking him. Even if we hadn't got anything he reckons he would have loved it, but getting 2 goats infected him with the bug.
Attachment 240967
It turned out that the "nanny" was actually a small (and horrendously stinky) billy. When getting them up to the fence I noticed 2 things:
1. a 1cm deep graze in the white billy's belly, just forward of the leg (visible in the photo).
2. both goats were smaller than I had thought.
But restoring my confidence was that these two shots were exactly where I wanted them to be - mid hilar.
Lesson 2: size estimates matter just as much as range estimates when calculating the drop (more on that later too).
The next day my dawn hunt revealed no deer in the paddocks, but I spotted well over a dozen goats at the far end of the farm that we could go after later in the day. After breakfast we all headed up to the two goats from last night to gut them for the farmer. On our way we rumbled a mob of goats in the neighbour's bush and saw them crossing the creek onto our side, quite close to the ridge we were camped on.Attachment 240969
With my arms elbow deep in the black billy (the white one tossed over the fence - no dogs would eat that stinky thing) we spotted the farmer away down the ridge. My eldest, still buzzing from the previous might, ran all the way over to tell him there was dog tucker over where we were. Leaving the family to walk back to camp, I went into the QEII reserve bush on the edge of the farm for a bush hunt. I may have spooked something large in the edge of the bush as I entered, but I only heard it. No fresh sign, but I encountered (and touched) my first, and hopefully last, ever ongaonga. As I type, the back of my hand is still numb.
That afternoon was frustrating. We could hear the goats in the neighbour's bush, sometimes quite near us, but we didn't spot them. Later on we spotted a mob of 20 across the creek on the neighbour's paddock. The contrast between where we were and where they were was striking. We were sitting up on a slash covered hillside while they were in a flat, almost impossibly green paddock with short, lush grass. Why they would ever cross over to our side was a mystery to me.
At one point it's as if they were laughing at us. Sitting over there under 150m in the paddock in plain sight where we didn't have permission to shoot, once strung out in a line inviting automatic fire. At one point I got all 20 in my scope, but the photo wasn't the best. The farmer drove past. Seeing the goats on the neighbour's paddock he observed they were taunting me.
Attachment 240968
That evening we had more luck. Our whippet doesn't have good recall yet so she was on leash for the trip. She was getting a bit antsy after dinner so I took her out on the slope above our camp overlooking the slash for a sniff. Almost immediately I spotted about 6 goats down the farm track. The goats had crossed the creek at last! Getting my son and dropping the dog off at camp we worked our way along the ridge above the farm track. Keeping out of sight the whole way we eventually climbed down a road cut for the recent logging and got to within 100m of them. They must have smelled us in the swirly wind so they got a bit wary. Getting a good rest I lined up on a nanny approaching another nanny and kid below us. Reminding myself that shooting downhill you need to aim lower I aimed where the leg passes the chest. Miss!
The sneezing commenced. They didn't know where the shots were coming from so they milled around, unsure. Some even started coming up the logging track towards us. Others started crossing the creek, while another group, including a big billy, went back up the farm track towards our camp. At an even steeper angle but at half the distance of the previous shot I took out the billy with a perfect centre hilar shot. Goats were running in every direction making shot selection difficult. . Contemplating standing up for an offhand shot at the close goats, I slowly stood up, and yep, there were 3 goats sidling around the ridge trying to get a look at us. Chickening out, hoping for some more sniping shots I slowly went back down, and watched about 10 goats running, screened by thin trees, heading off over the creek to the neighbours. Taking an offhand shot at a slower goat I missed again. This downhill shooting business is hard.
We found the billy, right by the road and headed back up to camp. The younger two kids happily playing with the dog in tent, my wife joined us up on the ridge with the slash. Counselling patience, she watched the goats for half an hour with us. I talked about the strategy I've read of shooting the lead nanny to confuse the rest when lo and behold, said brown nanny led the mob back up the creek towards us. Might they cross over again? I got into position with the wife spotting. My son cleared the grass for a shooting alley and we waited. The nanny came first, disappearing from view then popping up in a fallen tree. Remembering my earlier miss I aimed lower. BANG!
Off she shot behind a pile of slash. The other goats were confused, half staying over the other side of the creek (but in eminently shootable positions) and half running along the creek behind some trees. A small brown kid, possibly the nanny's, ran about confused, eventually ending up in a tree. At this point the farmer showed up. We told him about the big billy and discussed where the brown nanny might be. He was surprised that we'd seen no deer, and pointed out a few spots I should check out in the morning. No good shots presented themselves until the kid came down out of its tree and stood in one place. We decided to go for it, especially since its mother was probably lying dead behind a pile of slash. Estimating the distance at 200m, my son cleared away some tall grass obscuring the shot. I really, really didn't want to miss this shot. This guy has given permission to shoot on his land, doesn't like guns (although his wife hunts), so if I miss what looks like an easy shot at a stationary target who knows what he'll think. Having earlier planted the seed of the difficulty of downhill shots, I line up, checked with my wife on the estimate of the distance and fired. Forgetting completely lesson number 2.
"You got him", says the farmer, he's struggling. But we wanted rather than believed it. Sure enough, it happily trotted over the creek and rejoined the mob. I had either misjudged the distance, the size, or both. I'm picking both.
Forgetting lesson 1, we picked out way downhill through the slash to retrieve the brown nanny. Man, everything looks so different. After 30 minutes of searching, including sending our son up to the firing position to check we were in the right place, we gave up, resolving to look again on our way out in the morning. Maybe shooting a brown nanny at dusk amongst piles of slash wasn't a hot idea.
Lesson 3: if you have the option, pick targets that contrast the surroundings.
The morning hunt was a washout- blowing a gale. Discouraged, and pondering giving up hunting, on an impulse I headed back to last night's shooting platform to put lesson 1 into practice - fixing the landmarks. Having forgotten the binos that morning I settled down with my rifle to look at it from the POV from last night. Would you believe it? The same mob of goats was crossing the creek. And there's a brown nanny in the same place I shot the one last night. BANG! Was that a death run or a miss? I lined up on a huge nanny. Bang flop. Another brown nanny. Bang flop. That felt a lot better.
Attachment 240959
Having not found the nanny we were going to take meat from last night, I got the front and rear wheels, neck and backstraps from the large nanny. The liver for the dog too. The smaller nanny's front wheels were taken out, so less meat from that one.
By the time I had finished that job, the family had packed up the camp and were waiting on the track ready to walk out.
Home by 11:30, the next hour was meat prep. 7kg from the large nanny (bone in) covered the cost of the petrol to get to the farm and the bullets. Much more encouraging.
Attachment 240961
So lessons: Memorize key landmarks before setting off to look. Size estimates matter just as much as range estimates when calculating the drop, and if you have the option, pick targets that contrast the surroundings.
What encouraged me was every shot that hit an animal (except that white billy where I underestimated the drop) hit within a couple of inches of the aim point. What discouraged me was the misses. 12 shots, 5 definites, 2 maybes. And 2 of the definites were at similar angles and ranges to the misses, but my shot placement matched the aiming point almost exactly. So what went wrong? Did I just forget to compensate for angle with the misses but remembered for the hits?
Things to work on:
1. Earn more money to get a range finder, preferably with angle calculations.
2. If not 1, then work on distance and angle estimation.
3. Learn ballistics
4. Consider a 200 metre zero and learn to use it, especially for sub-50m shots for bush hunting.
At the end of the day though, it was nice to take at least 5 goats, even if 3 were billies, and the family had a great time. One even caught the bug, and the wife is keen for more, even to do the shooting next time.
