Thread: Spring in the Rangitata

Second week of the school holidays I took my son for an adventure up the Rangitata river chasing tahr .
We caught the ferry then drove,and stayed the night in the old mesopotamia schoolhouse, then in the morning flew in for a few days.
It was howling , raining and snowing for the first couple of days so options were a bit limited, and not many animals spotted, they were still up high,a bit early for lowvember .
Just on dark the second day we spotted a couple and my son managed to secure his first tahr with a fast climb and a very tricky steep uphill shot in the snow and wind which made for a very proud dad. got back around 11 oclock so so had a sleep in the next day.
Next afternoon we glassed till dark ,and dispite the now mint weather we spotted very few animals ,I saw a couple of bulls at the far end of spotting scope range and we made a plan for the next day .
We headed up in the morning taking a fair while to get across valley and up to the altitude they would hopefully drop down to ,and set up a bit of a gun rest and waited. When we finally spotted them slowly dropping down from their inaccessible lair it was getting pretty late around 630. we had to make a call ,and decided 7oclock cutoff time as it was miles back down to the valley floor , and could get pretty interesting in the dark. The tahr decided to take a different route ,and disappeared which had us feeling a bit low after waiting for hours , thought it was all over .
Then , just after 7 one stepped into view in an accessible spot and i shot it at 420 yards. A quick scramble up the very steep chute, and We had him in the bag. a couple of other tahr appeared directly above me knocking down rocks and snow which hurried our decent a bit . Got back tired but wrapped around midnight ate and packed up for our 8am pick up , and were back in civilisation before we knew it.

Great trip with lots of highs and lows.

Awesome effort. Good example

Well done, a great time with your boy. Great memories

Good effort father n son,big country up there.Nice photos.

Looks like the start of a long career in hunting! 🔥

Shit that's awesome !!!

Well done dad

Need to do it with my boy too

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

Well done guys

Sent from my SM-S906E using Tapatalk

Great.
I see George has his Grandfather's dislike for Canadians.

Nice work

forgot to mention, we saw a couple of tahr crossing a deep snow gully , the bull took a leap into it catching its front legs in the deep snow and doing a front flip , then rolling and finally composing himself to carry on. very funny, wish we got it on video !

Excellent, congrats to your son on his first tahr.

Well done, some great memories for you & the lad.

Nothing wrong with Canada's... Chunks of meat quick fried in beer batter happen to be rather good in fact lol.

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

Nothing wrong with Canada's... Chunks of meat quick fried in beer batter happen to be rather good in fact lol.

I hear brining them is a good way to go. we kept the meat off it so will try it soon.

Originally Posted by craigc

Looks like the start of a long career in hunting! ��

He might just use up all my reloading components by the time he gets to my age.