Gents: A few years ago I did a Tahr hunt on foot near Mt. Cook and it was the hardest hunt I had ever done. Well, time passes and I thought it might be a good idea to hunt a Chamois on foot (I must have forgotten the steepness of the mountains and how sore I was for days)so I booked a hunt with Mike Wilks (South Pacific Safaris) near Kaikoura on the south island. I did have a backup plan to use a helicopter if my legs/lungs got too worn out to make another trek up the mountain.
There is a mountain there called Mt Horrible, and it is aptly named...it is horrible.
We hunted on both private and government land and did not see another hunter, the weather was pretty good, mild with a bit of rain but the wind was very high, high enough to blow shipping containers off of the docks at Wellington.
Our first day wasn't productive at all, we walked across a private farm to a large tract of government land and saw only Red Stags and Fallow deer. It was about a 6 mile hike.
Day two we started on a private farm and were able to ride a 4 wheeler (motorbike) most of the way to the hunting area, we had permission to hunt the private area if we saw anything so stopped to glass a couple of valleys. The very first valley proved to hold 7 Chamois on distant slopes, including one nice buck. We had only about a one mile stalk by going down a valley and slipping back up below the Chamois. We got to within 260 yards and I was able to take the Chamois with a single shot.
It took almost 4 hours to climb/slide/climb out of that hole back to the track. I was completely "stuffed" and my guide was pretty tired as well.
I will post a photo or two when I get home; got to spend a day or two in Queensland doing tourist stuff.

G'Day Fella's,

Good to hear and well done Karl!
Yes NZ alpine hunting, is the hardest work I have ever done!
But the rewards are also very good!

FYI Karl, you should have spent a day relaxing in the thermal springs at Hanmer Springs (150ish K's from Kaikoura), after the hunt!

Looking forward to the photo's!

Doh!
Homer

Hey, good on you, Karl! Just saw photos from Doug and Debbie of their adventures over there! Cheers, Ben