Just had a successful Tahr hunt in first week of May on a balloted Tahr block in South Westland. The mature bulls still back up high and not showing themselves much, a couple more weeks and they come into the herds for the rut. Counted 100 odd animals on first hunting day as the sun came into the valley. Party of three, a couple of 11" bulls and two animals culled for meat but hung up and unable to recover. Wisely delayed our flight in for a couple of days to avoid the stormy weather, another party over in the next block went in on the Saturday and not so lucky, their tent was destroyed overnight with all their gear soaked, called for the chopper on Sunday to come and get them out but it couldn't get in to rescue the cold, wet party until after dropping us three in at our block until the Monday afternoon. The rest of the week was brilliantly fine weather, very cold and frosty nights but the snow melting away to have each day warmer than the last. Great tenting trip for the hardy with plenty of climbing around some steep country.
A few photos below, will add some more when I get them from the others.

Drop off at our camp site, bloody cold and isolated feeling.


Please come back, don't leave us.


Hey we are back down here!


Just up from camp on the first day in.


Looking to the head of the valley in the mist.


Bloody hell it's cold, where's that sun.


Now that's much nicer and good Tahr country.


Just opposite camp, Tahr seen on those slopes every day.


Same again, shot our meat off those shear rock faces but they still hung up.


Looking to the head of the valley, cold out of the sun.


Our mate fly camped up at the river head and got 2 bulls on our last morning.

Been a great week for you Eagle, even if it was a bit cold. Good sleep and hot tucker can make that all bearable though, and of course, seeing that many animals with at least a few falling to the guns to top it off. Did the new 6.5-06 get blooded?

looks a bit on the cold side, what block was it?, dropped of by James himself

The Big Bulls are hard work before 10th May. Unless you're on the Tahr Farms to the east!!! Still not a bad place to be all the same. Big fellas should be onthe prowl about now.

Yes Garry, the 6.5-06 got blooded but the animal with all feet in the air didn't oblige by falling to the bottom of the rock face to recover.

Wazza56, well spotted, it was the the veteran James himself at the controls, was good to catch up with him after 20 years away from my old stamping grounds.

TrackersNZ, we had a helihunter pass through our block with a bull slung underneath heading back over the East Coast. We know who he was.

Great pics,Looks enjoyably cold.

I have an outstanding invit the hunt tahr and chamoir on the south island on a private station and neighbouring mountains

What's the average shooting distance for these critters please ?

Can I be rude and ask the 2 animals that was not recoverable

Is that the norm?

I understand terrin is extreme

Thanks

quote:

Originally posted by londonhunter:
I have an outstanding invit the hunt tahr and chamoir on the south island on a private station and neighbouring mountains

What's the average shooting distance for these critters please ?

Can I be rude and ask the 2 animals that was not recoverable

Is that the norm?

I understand terrin is extreme

Thanks

The shooting range can be anywhere from a few metres to as long as you feel comfortable to shoot. The first animal shot for meat was 80 metres away and it needed to kick or move around on the shot to fall off the huge unclimbable (to humans) boulder that it was on but unfortunately it dropped instantly to the shot and just stayed up on the boulder. The second meat animal was shot on the last morning so we were in a hurry to shoot and get back to camp before the expected chopper pick up. We could not get any closer than a ranged 320 metres with the first shot taken with a 7mm RM. This was a miss and then it was just shooting at animals going downhill seemingly at a hundred mile an hour on a shear rock face with my second shot from the 6.5-06 knocking one down but it hung up in a small crack in the rock face.

The two bulls shot from a mob of six were at an estimated 350 metres distance(no time to properly range as a mob of nannies were whistling and putting the bulls on alert making them move further away from the shooter). Took 6 shots from a 300WM to get the two animals down. No time to dial up the NightEater scope either so just had to hold over.

Most hunters will tell of shooting trophy animals that have proved to be unrecoverable. We could have shot plenty of easier animals for meat on any of our hunting days but as we were looking for big trophy bulls we did not want to unnecessarily disturb the area too soon. As it turned out we just had bad luck securing a couple of animals to take out on the chopper for meat on the last evening and morning.

This is not a problem though as our Dept of Conservation want to see animals culled and not just the odd bull or two taken by each party in the hunting block. This particular block was culled by two DOC sponsored foot hunters in February this year and they took 140 nannies and young tahr out. They do not shoot immature or old bulls.

Here is a link to a video of some of that cull. If the link does not work look on YouTube for Tahr cull_0002wmv. This is the Jacobs River block that we were in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFZznyokDSk

Yes the terrain can be extreme especially so on the West Coast of the South Island, much more so than my experience on the East Coast. Even in the creeks there are huge boulders to clamber over and around, one foot wrong and it can be serious or fatal injury. This can be even more extreme and dangerous in wet or snowy weather where of course rescue by chopper maybe impossible until the weather clears.

top vid

Yeah, and some nice shooting as well.

Is that a silencer on the end of the barrel?
bye the way, top shooting
Cheers Malcolm

quote:

Originally posted by malcolm:
Is that a silencer on the end of the barrel?
bye the way, top shooting
Cheers Malcolm

Yes it is a silencer. The video is of an earlier culling shoot, not our hunt that the photos come from posted above.
Agree that it is good shooting from the two guys doing the culling. They expended a lot of ammunition on that culling trip.

It is a shame that so much good meat is not able to be recovered and used on these culling exercises. Young tahr meat is as good as it gets for wild game, easily as good or better than prime beef.
All the animals we saw on our hunt were beautifully filled out animals carrying a lot of prime conditioned meat.