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.
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Great trip with lots of highs and lows.
