Had a go at hunting feral goats outside of Wellington near Wairarapa with a new buddy of mine yesterday and we had a blast. We used his Tikka T3 in 6.5x55 with a Bushnell Elite 3200 3-9x and some reloads tipped with Amax projectiles to drop the goats. It was a really handy rifle for the terrain we were covering.
After a two hour walk along a stony riverbed into the hunting area we started our uphill climb to a terrace about at about 200m where we found our first goats. My friend took a hefty billy, which we didn't get pictures of but it was a great start to the day and I'm sure his dog couldn't be happier about it! After a bit more climbing around we spotted a group of three or four on the side of a hill opposite to the one we were climbing and started to move into position. This is when we happened upon another group of goats and after crawling into position we took out 3 of them in quick succession. The rest got away as we were reloading but my back is thankful for it now as the four we took out ended up being plenty. I was just along for the ride, more or less, so I only took a single shot on a medium sized nanny for the freezer.
It's not something that I'd get myself stuck into every weekend but it is certainly tons of fun and really the only way to keep the population in check so the native species (and deer ha ha...) can maintain their foothold in this fantastic region. I'll be out again as soon as I'm armed but in the future I'm going to make more of an effort to seek out the red deer that supposedly inhabit the river valley. Anyways, the spoils!
After a two hour walk along a stony riverbed into the hunting area we started our uphill climb to a terrace about at about 200m where we found our first goats. My friend took a hefty billy, which we didn't get pictures of but it was a great start to the day and I'm sure his dog couldn't be happier about it! After a bit more climbing around we spotted a group of three or four on the side of a hill opposite to the one we were climbing and started to move into position. This is when we happened upon another group of goats and after crawling into position we took out 3 of them in quick succession. The rest got away as we were reloading but my back is thankful for it now as the four we took out ended up being plenty. I was just along for the ride, more or less, so I only took a single shot on a medium sized nanny for the freezer.
It's not something that I'd get myself stuck into every weekend but it is certainly tons of fun and really the only way to keep the population in check so the native species (and deer ha ha...) can maintain their foothold in this fantastic region. I'll be out again as soon as I'm armed but in the future I'm going to make more of an effort to seek out the red deer that supposedly inhabit the river valley. Anyways, the spoils!
