in thick scrub, a small-bodied buck with 8½ inch horns.
It was with some difficulty that we climbed out of that place, but once back on the ridge hawk-eyed Charles soon spotted two more bucks at 240 yards. He fired a shot at one but since the angle was steep the bullet went high. In hindsight I think that was a blessing because it would have been a very difficult retrieval from that spot.
From there it was a bit of a sweat to the top of the pass we were heading for, and we started our descent towards the camp via the spot where Charles had shot his buck. When we were close to the trophy we spotted another young buck and I got some good video footage of it.
Andrew’ s chamois turned out to be an 8 5 ⁄ 8” buck, again very small-bodied. I think that because the horns look bigger on a small-bodied animal, we were misled into thinking they were longer than they actually were.
By the time we got back to the camp we had been away for about 15 hours and were all fairly stuffed. A tin of lasagne and a bit of vino and we were all in bed by 11.30 pm, though I was awake for another half hour writing my diary by the light of my head torch.
Next morning we had a bit of a sleep-in and after a late breakfast were back on the hill at 10 am. We headed up towards the top of the ridge above the camp, and when we were about 60 metres from the top we sat down to do some glassing. We heard a noise above us and immediately spotted a good-looking buck at the top of the ridge, thumping his feet and whistling in alarm. Andrew fired a quick shot with his 7mm magnum and the buck rolled 30 yards down towards us. Its horns turned out to be 9 5 / 8” so Andrew was ecstatic and wore a Cheshire cat smile! Since we were only 150 yards from camp we took the animal back there after the
We were woken by a kea after a nap on the tops
Some of the chamois we shot were on the steep faces at left
40 NZ Hunting & Wildlife 196- Autumn 2017