Thread: Who got the last laugh? You decide

We went away for a short family farm trip the other day. We had permission to camp on a farm and shoot whatever pesties we encountered. This was an experiment to see whether a longer trip in the bush would work.
We went to the farm after an early dinner, with plans for me to go looking for deer and do some reconnaissance for future hunts. I headed off up the middle ridge of the farm with my eldest son, 11, while my wife and the two youngest set up camp in the edge of some pine forest.

Halfway up the ridge I spotted far off a mob of 7 goats at the top of a small cliff. After a brief discussion where my son reminded me a goat in the hand is worth 2 deer in the bush I consulted my topo map app: 300 metres away or so. Because I'm not on the same level yet as @Flyblown shooting goats out to 600m, we dropped down the ridge to get some manuka scrub between us and the goats to conceal us as we got closer.

My son was very excited. He's been out on a couple of short bush hunts with me but has never seen any animals. So seeing a mob of goats amped him up and his chatter, copious under normal circumstances, increased.

As we went we talked about avoiding being skylined and how quick motions of the head, arms, waving hands etc are much more likely to be seen than slow movements. At last we got close to the edge of the gully separating yes send the goats and dropped to a crouch, then bellies.

Consulting my app I estimated we were 200m away at the same height more or less and they hadn't seen us. Game time! With the rifle zeroed at 100m I was confident that a 2.5" high aiming point would be fine, even though I've not shot past 100m before.

I cleared a shooting lane in the long grass, lined up just in front of the front leg of a small white nanny, told my son to watch the shot, and fired. Success! No white nanny to be seen.

Hmm, "where did it fall?" I asked my son. He admitted he had his fingers in his ears, worried about the blast. I assured him that the suppressor in the open field would be totally different to unsuppressed rifles at the range. "With the recoil I lose sight of the target when I fire. That's why you're supposed to watch thorough the binos." I told him to watch while I lined up on a brown nanny, same place. Miss!

The goats wised up and ran up the hill behind them. Glumly we counted them as they disappeared over a ridge 300m away. Still, there were only 7, so the white nanny was somewhere. We spent the next 5 minutes flashing the area including down the bottom of the cliff. Nothing.

"Let's go over there and have a look around. She could have run behind a bush." So off we went. Nothing. We couldn't even find the cliff once we got over there. Everything looked so different.

Lesson 1: Memorize key landmarks before setting off to look. (More on that later).

Then my son spotted what looked like the same mob on a ridge nearby. 140m away. Much easier. Then I spotted the small white nanny. So I had missed her after all. Getting a good rest, I lined up same place on the nanny, fired, then before the rest of the mob reacted, dropped a medium black billy close to her. There were a couple of cries then silence. "You got them Dad! I saw the white one fall down!"

Fever pitch of excitement.

The light failing fast, we scrambled down the spur we were on and up the side of the other ridge. 2 goats down! The trip back was full of conversation, punctuated by repeated thanks from my son for taking him. Even if we hadn't got anything he reckons he would have loved it, but getting 2 goats infected him with the bug.



It turned out that the "nanny" was actually a small (and horrendously stinky) billy. When getting them up to the fence I noticed 2 things:

1. a 1cm deep graze in the white billy's belly, just forward of the leg (visible in the photo).
2. both goats were smaller than I had thought.

But restoring my confidence was that these two shots were exactly where I wanted them to be - mid hilar.

Lesson 2: size estimates matter just as much as range estimates when calculating the drop (more on that later too).

The next day my dawn hunt revealed no deer in the paddocks, but I spotted well over a dozen goats at the far end of the farm that we could go after later in the day. After breakfast we all headed up to the two goats from last night to gut them for the farmer. On our way we rumbled a mob of goats in the neighbour's bush and saw them crossing the creek onto our side, quite close to the ridge we were camped on.

With my arms elbow deep in the black billy (the white one tossed over the fence - no dogs would eat that stinky thing) we spotted the farmer away down the ridge. My eldest, still buzzing from the previous might, ran all the way over to tell him there was dog tucker over where we were. Leaving the family to walk back to camp, I went into the QEII reserve bush on the edge of the farm for a bush hunt. I may have spooked something large in the edge of the bush as I entered, but I only heard it. No fresh sign, but I encountered (and touched) my first, and hopefully last, ever ongaonga. As I type, the back of my hand is still numb.

That afternoon was frustrating. We could hear the goats in the neighbour's bush, sometimes quite near us, but we didn't spot them. Later on we spotted a mob of 20 across the creek on the neighbour's paddock. The contrast between where we were and where they were was striking. We were sitting up on a slash covered hillside while they were in a flat, almost impossibly green paddock with short, lush grass. Why they would ever cross over to our side was a mystery to me.

At one point it's as if they were laughing at us. Sitting over there under 150m in the paddock in plain sight where we didn't have permission to shoot, once strung out in a line inviting automatic fire. At one point I got all 20 in my scope, but the photo wasn't the best. The farmer drove past. Seeing the goats on the neighbour's paddock he observed they were taunting me.

That evening we had more luck. Our whippet doesn't have good recall yet so she was on leash for the trip. She was getting a bit antsy after dinner so I took her out on the slope above our camp overlooking the slash for a sniff. Almost immediately I spotted about 6 goats down the farm track. The goats had crossed the creek at last! Getting my son and dropping the dog off at camp we worked our way along the ridge above the farm track. Keeping out of sight the whole way we eventually climbed down a road cut for the recent logging and got to within 100m of them. They must have smelled us in the swirly wind so they got a bit wary. Getting a good rest I lined up on a nanny approaching another nanny and kid below us. Reminding myself that shooting downhill you need to aim lower I aimed where the leg passes the chest. Miss!

The sneezing commenced. They didn't know where the shots were coming from so they milled around, unsure. Some even started coming up the logging track towards us. Others started crossing the creek, while another group, including a big billy, went back up the farm track towards our camp. At an even steeper angle but at half the distance of the previous shot I took out the billy with a perfect centre hilar shot. Goats were running in every direction making shot selection difficult. . Contemplating standing up for an offhand shot at the close goats, I slowly stood up, and yep, there were 3 goats sidling around the ridge trying to get a look at us. Chickening out, hoping for some more sniping shots I slowly went back down, and watched about 10 goats running, screened by thin trees, heading off over the creek to the neighbours. Taking an offhand shot at a slower goat I missed again. This downhill shooting business is hard.

We found the billy, right by the road and headed back up to camp. The younger two kids happily playing with the dog in tent, my wife joined us up on the ridge with the slash. Counselling patience, she watched the goats for half an hour with us. I talked about the strategy I've read of shooting the lead nanny to confuse the rest when lo and behold, said brown nanny led the mob back up the creek towards us. Might they cross over again? I got into position with the wife spotting. My son cleared the grass for a shooting alley and we waited. The nanny came first, disappearing from view then popping up in a fallen tree. Remembering my earlier miss I aimed lower. BANG!

Off she shot behind a pile of slash. The other goats were confused, half staying over the other side of the creek (but in eminently shootable positions) and half running along the creek behind some trees. A small brown kid, possibly the nanny's, ran about confused, eventually ending up in a tree. At this point the farmer showed up. We told him about the big billy and discussed where the brown nanny might be. He was surprised that we'd seen no deer, and pointed out a few spots I should check out in the morning. No good shots presented themselves until the kid came down out of its tree and stood in one place. We decided to go for it, especially since its mother was probably lying dead behind a pile of slash. Estimating the distance at 200m, my son cleared away some tall grass obscuring the shot. I really, really didn't want to miss this shot. This guy has given permission to shoot on his land, doesn't like guns (although his wife hunts), so if I miss what looks like an easy shot at a stationary target who knows what he'll think. Having earlier planted the seed of the difficulty of downhill shots, I line up, checked with my wife on the estimate of the distance and fired. Forgetting completely lesson number 2.

"You got him", says the farmer, he's struggling. But we wanted rather than believed it. Sure enough, it happily trotted over the creek and rejoined the mob. I had either misjudged the distance, the size, or both. I'm picking both.

Forgetting lesson 1, we picked out way downhill through the slash to retrieve the brown nanny. Man, everything looks so different. After 30 minutes of searching, including sending our son up to the firing position to check we were in the right place, we gave up, resolving to look again on our way out in the morning. Maybe shooting a brown nanny at dusk amongst piles of slash wasn't a hot idea.

Lesson 3: if you have the option, pick targets that contrast the surroundings.

The morning hunt was a washout- blowing a gale. Discouraged, and pondering giving up hunting, on an impulse I headed back to last night's shooting platform to put lesson 1 into practice - fixing the landmarks. Having forgotten the binos that morning I settled down with my rifle to look at it from the POV from last night. Would you believe it? The same mob of goats was crossing the creek. And there's a brown nanny in the same place I shot the one last night. BANG! Was that a death run or a miss? I lined up on a huge nanny. Bang flop. Another brown nanny. Bang flop. That felt a lot better.


Having not found the nanny we were going to take meat from last night, I got the front and rear wheels, neck and backstraps from the large nanny. The liver for the dog too. The smaller nanny's front wheels were taken out, so less meat from that one.

By the time I had finished that job, the family had packed up the camp and were waiting on the track ready to walk out.
Home by 11:30, the next hour was meat prep. 7kg from the large nanny (bone in) covered the cost of the petrol to get to the farm and the bullets. Much more encouraging.


So lessons: Memorize key landmarks before setting off to look. Size estimates matter just as much as range estimates when calculating the drop, and if you have the option, pick targets that contrast the surroundings.

What encouraged me was every shot that hit an animal (except that white billy where I underestimated the drop) hit within a couple of inches of the aim point. What discouraged me was the misses. 12 shots, 5 definites, 2 maybes. And 2 of the definites were at similar angles and ranges to the misses, but my shot placement matched the aiming point almost exactly. So what went wrong? Did I just forget to compensate for angle with the misses but remembered for the hits?

Things to work on:
1. Earn more money to get a range finder, preferably with angle calculations.
2. If not 1, then work on distance and angle estimation.
3. Learn ballistics
4. Consider a 200 metre zero and learn to use it, especially for sub-50m shots for bush hunting.

At the end of the day though, it was nice to take at least 5 goats, even if 3 were billies, and the family had a great time. One even caught the bug, and the wife is keen for more, even to do the shooting next time.

Good story.

Re. stinky billy. Skin it. It won’t stink n if it’s for dogs they won’t care.

Hot day it pays to bleed n gut animals straight away n get to cool place. Meat can go off real quick in summer time.

Hopefully the lessons will be remembered for next time. I shot a spiker on dusk this time of year a few years ago. Didn’t get it till next day. Too late it was blown.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Good write up and honest about the misses. You don't mention calibre but I'm picking 708, 308 or similar by the drop you mention. Zeroing at 2 and a half or 3 inches high at 100 should give you "point and shoot" from 50 to about 275 yards. With the bullet being in a circle with a radius of 3 inches for that entire distance.
It's @Micky Ducks beloved rule of 3 and does away with guessing holdovers etc occasionally lead to us outsmarting ourselves.
Your shooting ability isn't in question as shot placement shows it's range "guesstimation" and this should help till you get that rangefinder

That's a good write up with some good reflections at the end.

Focusing on low hanging fruit, my 2c on where to improve would be

1, get a rangefinder. you don't need to splash out big on these either, 2nd hand leupold that reaches out to 600 is plenty for what your doing. Also find out what the subtension is in your scope reticle.
Once you accurately know range, you can use the reticle subtension to measure distant objects, (measure size of animal). Even it is just a standard Duplex reticle on a variable scope, there are at least four solid increments you can use. If you have a ballistic reticle, even better.

2, if you aren't good at fixing a distant position in your head and going to it, use the range finder and a compass to work out the distance and direction. Then you can plot a waypoint to navigate to with a GPS. But ultimately this is a key skill in recovering animals you have shot, especially if you do any shooting in scrub and gorse.
A way you can make it easier is leave someone at your shooting point. That person keeps a visual fix on the position of the shot animal. When you walk to where it is they can guide you in. This can work by yelling, phone or radio. At night a lazer pointer in the hands of the spotter and a torch shining up into the tree tops from the finder works fairly well too.

One thing with steeper hills, is that from front on they usually look a lot more two dimensional than they really are, what can look like a cliff face overhang from front on, can actually be a walkable slope once your on it. In hilly scrub country the small dips and the walkable slopes become an optical illusion that compresses the dimensions of the landscape from a distance. It's a bit like stepping into a tunnel where the exit has a much bigger opening than the entry, it will look shorter than it actually is. It is not until walking some distance inside the tunnel than one can realise the true length. Hills are a bit the same.

Being good at picking a spot and walking to it is something that can be worked on. You don't even need to be on a farm with a rifle to practice.


3, With the up down shooting, inside 200m with a fast calibre, there will be very little practical difference in POI from inclined shooting. Unless you have a rangefinder and have practiced with a graduated reticle or dial, you will most likely get more innacuracy from distraction and overcompensation than you would get if you just ignore this factor and put the cross hairs where you want the bullet to go. Maybe avoid head shots if the ballistics are more marginal, but inside 200m and under 45deg, if you just aim for the centre of the boiler room without worrying about angle, you will still get an animal on the deck.

4, If you want to learn ballistics, download a ballistics app or two and have a play, I personally wouldn't recommend using it in real time in a hunting situation, but just punch in some different ranges and angles and winds and get a feel for your calibre. Also enter some scenarios from your trip, and see how much or how little certain factors affected your shot. Do this before you buy the rangefinder, it will inform you how crucial (or not) the angle compensations are.

5, Put a target out at 200, shoot it at lease 3-4 times, your rifle doesn't need to be zeroed for 200, but most if zeroed for 100 are starting to drop a bit by 200 so it is useful to know by how much. It will also inform your ability at that distance. It may seem like waste of bullets, but it's easy to waste many more trying to hit an animal by guesswork. If you can't get on paper at 200, adopt a shorter maximum shooting distance.

Keep at it, and keep practicing, unless your shooting mosquitos or shooting long ways out where spin drift and earth rotation becomes a thing, then instinctive shooting is better than over calculated shooting. Good instinctive shooting usually takes a bit of practice and experience.

Goats, especially the bigger ones, can take a solid hit in the boiler room, not visibly react and sometimes walk away like nothing happened. But then you find them 20-30 metres into the scrub with their lights out and with a pulpy mess where the heart or lungs was. You won't always get a bang flop, so having a spotter who knows what their job is and being confident of where the bullet went is hugely beneficial.

great advice been given so far...agree 100% that at those sort of ranges you should be still point n shoot..dont over think it. you have a dog,when have shot something,use dog to help find it.....even kept on lead its nose is 1000% better than yours,once it is tuned in that find dead animal= food for me...life becomes much easier. by the looks of goats in photos..what you did shoot got shot well..thats a big plus.
keep farmer on side..keep going back and lowering goat numbers and hopefully will find a deer,and by then you will have worked out your shooting. one other thing..if goats are 200yards out in open country,and the cover is where you can shoot....spooked goats will run FROM open cover where they are safe,,,,into cover where yo ucan shoot them..... now how can yo uspook goats so they run into cover??? something loud works.... a shot over thier heads might do the trick..your not hunting neighbours....

Good honest report. Yes a 200 meter zero will end up similar too Mickys rule of 3 and will help. You just have to aim dead centre at reasonable ranges. Other ideas- if you cant afford the rangefinder, then when you are just out and walking around, pick an object in the distance and guess what it is, then pace it out. Keep doing that and your estimation will improve.
If you have access to a place that doesn't mind you firing shots, go rock hunting. Shoot rocks at different ranges from different spots and angles. It all improves your range estimation.

also being farmland.....use your phone and the topo50 app.....too easy to get ranges within cooee using it...by the sounds of it you have the time to do so..even if sitting and glassing from say spotX workout where say 250 yards is around you and know you can point and shoot anywhere inside that....and be confident of a fatal hit.

All good points, thanks all. I'm using a 6.5 creed, and was shooting American Whitetail 129gr for the goats. Not wasting my ELD-Xs on them!

Identify your target beyond all doubt because you never miss (right?) and I'll be missed.

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

also being farmland.....use your phone and the topo50 app.....too easy to get ranges within cooee using it...by the sounds of it you have the time to do so..even if sitting and glassing from say spotX workout where say 250 yards is around you and know you can point and shoot anywhere inside that....and be confident of a fatal hit.

That’s a good one too. When doing rabbit control on lifestyle blocks, safe backstop is limited, which equals limited opportunities, which can be partially mitigated sometimes by taking longer shots or at least having good inside knowledge of different distances on the property and where a .22 can reach from, to hit rabbits that predominantly present in the same places.

I use measuring tools on GIS maps and measure different distances between various different landmarks on the property. Then on the day I know distance from ‘driveway’ to ‘old man pine’ is 70yd so I don’t need to waste any time beaming the rangefinder across. Also very useful for night shooting when it’s hard to use the range finder.

For night shooting, in one rocky paddock I stacked little cairns at 25 yd intervals on one useful shooting lane. Old school, but it worked.


I do use my rangefinder a lot. While I do use it for ballistics regularly, I mainly just use it to confirm an animal is within ‘aim directly and shoot’ range. Second most common job for it is to confirm if the animal is within ‘can I be bothered going all the way over there’ range. Another sometimes use is if I shoot something in scrub and it looks like it could be a tricky find, note the landmark at shooting position. Once on position of the animal if you can’t find it, range back to the shooting position. Yes this only confirms that you are somewhere on the same arc as the animal was when the gun went bang, you can have infinitely more confidence than if it confirmed you are on a different arc with a difference in diameter of 50yds or more.
Within the hobby there are lots of gimmicks and shiny gadgets out there that are designed to suck money from our pockets, but I don’t put range finders in that category.

No matter whether you are zeroed for 200 or using the 3" rule, out to 300/350 yards your aim should never be off the animal. That includes steep up or down hill. There shouldn't be light between the cross hairs and the animal. Always aim at hair.

Originally Posted by whanahuia

Good honest report. Yes a 200 meter zero will end up similar too Mickys rule of 3 and will help. You just have to aim dead centre at reasonable ranges. Other ideas- if you cant afford the rangefinder, then when you are just out and walking around, pick an object in the distance and guess what it is, then pace it out. Keep doing that and your estimation will improve.
If you have access to a place that doesn't mind you firing shots, go rock hunting. Shoot rocks at different ranges from different spots and angles. It all improves your range estimation.

Agreed, on evening walks my partner and I sometimes take a rangefinder and take competing guesses at different chosen landmarks then see who wins when the range finder confirms it. The rule is that anyone can nominate a landmark and to score a point the guess has to be within 5% for <100, 10% 100-300, and 5% for anything over 300. Any guess that is outside 20% is a lost point.
~75% of scored points are within the last ~25% of guesses.
Anyone still following this will have clocked that guess and confirm is effective at teaching good range guesstimating.

Also, if you are wanting to shoot a deer, walk past the goats, you won't see any deer if you are shooting up goats.
Go for the deer first, and if nothing doing, on your walk home start on the goats.

Great write up, Goat hunting is always fun and the curry awesome

those numbers should be close enough for you to see what is meant by "just point n shoot"
that actually works out really neatly...smack on 2" high at 100 is smack on at 200 and 3" low at 250 even I could remember that!!!!
Hope that helps.