Heres a snippet of my Tahr hunt in New Zealand in 2024.
We were perched on a rugged South Island mountain ridgeline, way out there in the 4WD buggy, when our guide Mike Biemond whispered, “There are some tahr right over there.” He eased to a stop, and we glassed the opposite mountainside across a steep valley. The terrain was brutal—sheer rock faces, jagged cliffs, and steep tussock-covered slopes, the kind of unforgiving country where tahr thrive. Sure enough, his keen binocular eyes picked out a group of six or seven tahr, standing effortlessly on terrain that looked near impossible to reach.
To me, they looked at least 600 yards away, but the vastness of these mountains plays tricks on your depth perception. Mike grinned.
“No, about 445 yards, actually.”
I glanced at the drop below and asked, “Mike, are you sure you can retrieve him? That looks like hell to get back up here.”
A cheeky smile crossed his face. “Won’t take long. I can do that fairly easy.”
“Alright,” I said. “Let’s give it a whirl.”
We shifted to a small ledge, getting set up and comfortable. Mike double-checked the range and adjusted the Swarovski turret on the 6.5 PRC. The wind was howling hard from left to right.
“Hold right,” Mike said.
The first shot landed about a foot to the right and a foot high—the wind had more bite than I’d expected. Mike adjusted the range by a click, and I held about a foot into the wind. This time, the 143-grain bullet trailed straight into the tahr’s heart. He took ten steps, wobbled, and rolled over—dead.
“Far out, mate, that was amazing!”
Mike grinned. “Well done, John! Right through the heart—he’s a goner.”
The real work started then, as Mike made good on his promise and retrieved the tahr in record time, navigating the treacherous slopes with the ease of a man who’d done it a hundred times before. Looking around at the sheer cliffs and jagged peaks, I couldn't help but admire the resilience of these animals and the wild, untamed beauty of the New Zealand backcountry. https://realkiwihunting.com
A full story of this hunt will be available in the next edition of JR Hossack’s free online hunting magazine, around the end of March.
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