Thread: Tahr -Ben Ohau range

At the weekend i took my kids to shoot some Tahr up in the Ben Ohau range before Doc do anything stupid again.( wishful thinking)
Anyway its a nice accessible valley that i have hunted most years since 1992 and one that you will find reasonable numbers of tahr but certainly not excessive numbers by any means.
Last time we hunted, which was back in early june we saw around 35 tahr and shot a couple.
This time around we thought we will shoot several nannies but were disappointed to only find a nanny and kid despite searching high and low.
My suspicions regarding Doc shooting the valley were proven correct upon looking at the website which showed the cull numbers and flight path of the chopper (and yes i should have checked before).
Here is the link to check any areas before wasting your time going away for a hunt
https://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-re...ol-operations/

Now the Ben Ohau range is quite a significant range that extends from lake Ohau basically to the hermitage and has great access from the highway all the way to mt Cook.
It is an important recreational area to myself and many others but basically Doc havent just culled the numbers back but have gone for extermination.
I find this to be particularly frustrating to have had this happen in such important and accessible recreational area.
The numbers were in no way in breach of the Htcp with no excessive mobs and no evidence of browsing damage (in fact its flourishing)

In fact when i first started hunting Tahr, all these areas had quite large numbers of merinos grazing these alpine areas even up as high as the tahr habitat.
Once tenure review of these areas went ahead and removed the stock, the vegetation response was quite significant in comparison to when it was extensively grazed.
This certainly showed how the environment can respond despite being grazed for many years.
The numbers of tahr post tenure review have remained relatively low through till now especially considering the size of the area.

This cull was part of the 3000 tahr shot back in June 2018 but is an area that should never have been included in the cull. It is a classic example where a bit of consultation and game management should have been carried out and certainly not such a devastating cull.