New Zealand hunt report.

[Steelplink]

Wow. Am I feeling a little bit of envy? Perhaps. But, it sure seems like this trip was a blast. Great hunting! And thanks for the report

[Chinger]

Very nice pics

[tech1349]

That video's amazing

[Gunslinger]

Blazer? Why not Savage, we all know they're way more accurate!

Looks like an awesome, much envy in this one......

[token_irish]

Amazing, thanks for sharing!

[JimDO]

Great photos of a beautiful landscape and an amazing adventure!

Dont know why, I love flying, but I always wonder what if?
That doesnt look like a great place to make an emergency landing.... good thing you didnt have to.

[angrysoldier]

wow, looks like a great time.

[Zeroed-In]

Thank you for sharing the video as it was great to watch. It was also nice to see the SP1 and its brass deflector as I was wondering how you kept the ejecting shells out of the pilots way.
Blasting away with an AR out of a helicopter over beautiful countryside, life doesn't get much better.

[AikiNut]

John,
Thanks for these photos and story - nostalgia hitting hard at the moment.

To have an AR with magazines holding more than 7 rounds requires special licensing. I rather suspect that the company running the helicopter culling operations have Dept of Conservation (DOC) special licenses that allow them to use those. (To hunt deer on crown land, you need no hunting license - to hunt in the parks, you need a license to hunt in the park, but they're free, and DOC issues them along with a list of places they like to hide...)

I've lived there twice, hunted Tahr and Chamois (never saw any when I was out) (maybe I'm a bad hunter), and it's not for the faint of heart. The hills they live in are STEEP, as you can see from John's videos. Went on a goat cull or two using 4-wheel ATVs. My first one my friend and I got 43 in one day before I ran out of 6.5swede, and another day, walking a farm, I took 14 off to their makers. A young fellow I coached at the time described his trip hunting red deer once in "Otago". They were going to where they thought they'd find some deer, and saw a great white mass walking across a paddock (Kiwi for field) - They thought it was sheep to start, but it turned out to be a herd of 1500 feral goats..

So... Why did I come back to Canada? Hmm.. Oh, there was a recession....

[Aniest]

the [invasive species] population is out of control.

stripping the vegatation down so the indigenous wildlife are left with little to forage on

They were going to where they thought they'd find some deer, and saw a great white mass walking across a paddock (Kiwi for field) - They thought it was sheep to start, but it turned out to be a herd of 1500 feral goats..

Thank you all for the reply: this is exactly what I figured it would be, just not as bad. These goats and feral pigs are the hunts I would love to go on: being able to help return natural habitat to the indigenous species it belongs to.

I'm jealous!!! John: You shoulda plugged a couple more hundred for us!