I thought I would have major problems at my port of entry but the NZ police were wonderful and went WAY out of their way to deal with my firearm and to get me to my connecting flight. They walked me through customs where the agent asked if I had any food, I replied yes that I had some nuts. The police officer asked, “Don’t you want to see his nuts?” It took all my control to not laugh, seeing his sly smile only made it funnier. The officer then walked me through the terminal until I was clearly directed to my New Plymouth flight; he gave me his business card and told to call him if I had any problems.
This was my return hunt after a failed attempt earlier that spring. Joe Munn, my guide, had invited me to return and hunt with him over the Christmas holiday. We met, this time, in Joe’s home town of New Plymouth located on the north island. He had made all the reservations and had us a rental car for driving to the south island for our hunt. It was a long drive south plus a 3 ½ hour ferry ride. We stopped along side the road and slept from 3:30 to 6:30 am before continuing on into Hokitika where my luggage had been rerouted. We stayed the second night at the Jade Hotel in Hokitika waiting for the luggage.
The weather had been wonderful during our wait. We killed an afternoon napping in the park. I was lying next to the car using my jacket on top of a plastic bag as a pillow. I awoke to a powerful tug on the bag; a weka had pulled the bag. Wekas are a very rare ground nesting, flightless bird that is about the size of a chicken. We watched two different wekas walk around us and regularly approached within 6 feet. A link to some Weka information: http://nzbirds.com/birds/weka.html
James of Alpine Adventures had recently completed a survey of the tahr population for the Department of Conservation and had located some excellent populations of animals. He recommended we hunt Bissen Creek which is a tributary of the Perth River and joins up stream from the Scone hut. We flew in with Kevin Hill and his pilot had never been to Bissen Creek but was confident he would find it, the creek but not the spot to camp. When we arrived in the canyon it looked perfect for tahr hunting BUT you can imagine our disappointment when we saw someone else was already camped there. (We couldn’t help wondering if we had arrived two days earlier if we would have been first.) We looped around and flew back down river and up the canyon above Scone hut. The severe terrain between the hut and the helicopter landing site would keep the vast majority of people out of our canyon. We couldn’t see anyway to walk down to the hut. Our camp is shown below; the heli pad is at the top of the image, and a small opens just to the right of the tent. We found the tarp in the cave and we really appreciated the extra coverage.
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As you can see in the image below we were camped at the high water mark of the stream formed by run off from the glacier located just above us. It is difficult to make out the very top of the tent at the bottom of the rock slide.
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.This was a good canyon but not as nice a Bissen Creek. The pilot spotted the heli pad and set us down around 2:30, Sunday. Joe spotted two chammys right off on the opposite side of the river. By the time I had my rifle, shells, and rangefinder they were at 540 yards. We never saw chammy again during the entire trip.
After setting up camp we hiked up and saw tahr early, only one bull but he was only about 10 inches. We did see a lot of nannies and kids, we guessed 50 different animals. Several times we were in archery range of nannies and one time Joe was within 5 yards. The weather turned nasty, as predicted, and were driven back to camp early by the fog and rain. The hike down was slippery. On the way out Joe spotted two more bulls. Camp is located at 2997 ft and we hiked to 4340 ft the first night. Joe is excited to see so many tahr, he says this is the most tahr he has seen in 20 years.
Back at camp I take a pull of Chivas from the bottle and pop a bottle of Spitz Old Dark beer. It gets cold that night, slightly below freezing.
Joe never hunts tahr in the morning and several times tells me it is a waste of time to hunt the mornings so we hang out in camp until after lunch before beginning our climb up but this time slightly further up stream. We have already spotted nannies and kids before we leave camp. We haven’t climbed that far before spotting some bulls above us, they are pretty much located straight above camp. It is a tough climb and we are spotted by the tahr before we get in range but they don’t appear too alert. At 350 yards I tell Joe I can take a shot from there but he insists we continue to close the distance. Again at 300 and 250 I say I’m ready but we move even closer. Finally at 90 yards he gives me the go ahead and I slip out from our ridge line planning to shoot off of a 12 inch high rock. I reach the rock and am amazed the tahr haven’t sprinted away and lay down against the rock for a shot. I don’t make it very far before my feet let go and I begin a 10 foot slide down the face of the mountain. Of course I hold on to my new custom Ti in 25WSM and scratch the holy hell out of the stock – now it matches all my other rifles.
You can imagine my surprise when I see the tahr haven’t moved. Guess they were all laughing at the stupid biped. By then I realized these animals were not worried by our presence so I worked back up to the same rock and this time kicked in some foot holds. It was only a 90 yard shot and I waited until the largest of the three rams (there were actually four) step out onto a rock ledge, peering out into space with an azure background, the type of image that would remain in any hunter’s memory forever. You can see two of the rams in the image below taken before we reached the shooting point. We used the large boulder in the bottom left to conceal our approach. The shot was taken from just right of the boulder and the tahr had continued to the left and was shot off the ridgeline, about 15 yards from where they are in the image below.
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.At the shot the ram leapt from the point and tumbled down the hill coming to rest no more than 20 feet to my immediate right. The other two rams appeared confused and remained in sight for nearly a minute, at one time actually following down the slide path closer to where I sat.
I walked over to the ram and immediately saw on horn had been completely knocked off the head. We climbed up to look for the horn and while looking Joe spotted three rams on the next ridge over, the two we saw earlier plus a larger bull. He signaled me to go after him so I made the awfully ugly climb down into the ravine, on the left of the image above, and side hilled around. I spotted the three rams making it for the skyline; one was clearly larger than the other two. I guessed the range at 250 yards but significantly uphill. I used a rock face as a rest that kept me in a standing position. The ram crumbled at the shot and began tumbling down hill, this time 150 yards before stopping and right before a vertical face. It took several attempts and several minutes to reach the bull. Below is an image of the 8 inch bull in a summer cape, I didn’t get a picture of the first ram with the busted horn. Joe estimated him at 10 inches.
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Below is a view from below showing the hill side where the 8 incher was shot. He was shot just down from the peak on the left and slide to the bottom of the green on the right side of the peak. The 10 incher was shot on the mountain on the right side of the photo.
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I took off the third day of hunting and remained in camp. My legs became wobbly on the way out from the previous night of hunting. It was a good decision since my legs weren’t a problem for the remaining hunt.
The fourth day we headed up the canyon to the base of the glacier. We had spotted over 40 tahr at the head of the canyon. We left camp early and saw tahr just about everywhere we looked. Below is an image of some nannies and kids taken through the Nikon XL spotting scope.
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We did locate a mob of 4 bulls but none of them looked very big so we let them go. An extremely big nanny was spotted on the opposite side of the river. By now we were high enough upstream that we could safely cross over but we saw the nanny had a kid and I elected to pass. We were seeing so many tahr that I hated to settle on a nanny even though a DOC cull hunt was scheduled for later that year.
The photo below shows the area we hunted the fourth day. The spotting scope picture above is a close up of the hill side in the bottom left and the big nanny was on the unseen slope adjacent to the glacier on the right. The major portion of the glacier is barely visible at the extreme upper right of the image.
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On Christmas morning we used the satellite phone to call for a helicopter. We had seen an amazing number of tahr but hadn’t seen any big bulls after three days of hunting and another glassing from camp. On the morning of the 27th James moved us to the head waters of the Whataroa at Ice Lake. This is where Joe had intended to take us in April but the goofy outfitter sent in two strangers he met at the heli pad. Ice Lake is at the foot of a glacier and spectacular – I failed to get a picture so I guess I’ll have to return some day.
When we arrived it was rain lightly, we set up camp and climbed the ridge south of camp. We had already seen some nannies and kids above camp and a 10 inch bull directly across the river. I didn’t want to shoot another non-mountable bull so I left him alone. Once above camp we spotted several mobs, although not the large number of animals we saw at the first place. It started to rain hard so we hunkered down in a small cave in hopes of the rain lifting. Seems we spent a lot of time under various rock overhangs avoiding the rain during this trip. It had rained every day of the trip so far. The Sitka Downpour gear Sarah gave me just prior to this trip worked great. It was light and comfortable and waterproof.
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The fog rolled in cutting our visibility so we headed down to camp. No long after eating a meal the wind and rain picked up. It was now 5 pm and Joe had been in bed for an hour. The tent leaked in my two corners. I had my Ipod cranked up to drown out the noise from the rain and wind hitting the tent. BB King is singing the blues, how very appropriate, “Come rain or come shine”. The wind gets so strong it flattened the Cabelas 8x8, dome tent numerous times. The tent hits me in the head while I’m lying down. The tarp we had spread over the tent came off a couple of times. The Sika gear held up to the rain but the outside was soaked and there was no way I was going to get any sleep with the tent hitting me in the head so I transferred my bedroll to the little gear tent.
Joe awoke me the next morning and asked if I wanted to see some tahr that were across the river. I told him I was wet, cold, and tired and preferred to stay in bed. He didn’t share there was two shootable bulls and a third smaller bull. By the time I got up the bulls had move off out of range. I was a bit bummed but excited to learn there were bulls close by.
That afternoon we again climbed the ridge above camp. The ridge provided an excellent view of the right drainage where James told us there were two good rams, the face across from camp were we had seen four bulls, the one side of Ice Lake, and the table below camp on the opposite side where James had also said held a shootable bull. An image looking to the south from camp, the face where we expected to find a good bull is on the right. We spot a good mob of nannies and kids below the glacier. .
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The weather is nicer and helicopter tours are flying overhead and up to the glacier above Ice Lake then cutting over to the glacier on the south fork. There are two different helicopters and at times we see one about every 20 minutes. We watch the bull across from camp and he is not at all bothered by the copter even though it flies fairly close. Evidently he has become accustom to the noise.
We weren’t on the ridge very long before we spotted a bull below camp on the opposite side. He was a chocolate color and appeared to have good horns even though we were more than a mile away. A second bull, lighter in color, came out on the same hill side. A mob of nannies and kids were spotted above Ice Lake and then we saw three bulls coming down opposite of camp. It was the same three that had been there in the morning. We snuck back down and ended up about 200 yards from camp. Actually we were located between the camp and the heli pad. Joe studies the bulls for some time while I wait impatiently. One bull is clearly larger in body size but his horns aren’t as long another’s, the third is clearly smaller than the other two. I begin to cramp up given my uncomfortable position behind the rifle and tell Joe I’m going to shoot the largest bodied animal. He tells me to go ahead with the 315 yard shot, slight uphill but I have an excellent two point rest. At the shot the bull starts running downhill and then starts side hilling upstream. We both heard a solid whack from the bullet impact. There was a moment of confusion as the bull covered more than a 100 yards and cross a little creek and had begun climbing out. I fumbled my chambering of a second round due to my bad habit of always catching the empty. The crosshairs settled on the bull as he approached the top of the little draw when he fell down and didn’t appear as though he would ever get up.
Joe said to shoot the second biggest ram. He was standing upstream from the downed ram and at 400+ yards. Joe called out the distance but I don’t recall it. I rushed the shot and missed. The rams took off upstream but the rough terrain slowed them and they stopped momentarily several times. At 470 yards the bull stopped but was facing straight away. My rest was steady so I tried a Texas heart shot – I didn’t know I had missed him on the other shot. We watch both bulls run off and pick up a third bull we hadn’t seen until then. The bull I shot is no where in sight but we are confident he is down.
The river is too high to cross at the closest point so we head down stream. We leave all our equipment on the bank and Joe starts across. The river is high from the 6 days of rain. Joe makes it across but I get knocked down and elect to not cross. It’s getting dark and I would slow Joe down. I head back to camp, set up the spotting scope and start searching for the dead bull. Joe attempts climbing up the waterfalls but it is too steep and he has to turn back, head downstream and climb up through the scrub. He walks up the little creek and right pass where we guessed the bull was lying. After a lot of searching Joe starts to head back to camp but I redirect him to the exact point where we last saw the bull. He spots the hind legs from the knee down protruding from beneath a rock. He had walked within ten feet of the bull but it was hidden by the rock. Absolute no blood and only a few hairs on the ground is the entire spore for tracking. Joe finds a tiny exit hole and comments on the great distance the animal ran after being hit will a nearly perfectly placed shot. This image has holding the old bull’s skull and pointing to where the bull was when I shot. The bull was found in the little creek below the snow. Looking at my foot you can see the river.
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Here is an image looking from downstream back up to the Ice Lake camp. The river points at our camp, the tent barely visible. The opposite hill side is where the bull was shot.
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The next morning we climb again to our glassing point hoping to spot a bull on the north fork at the point already shared earlier. We spot the mob of nannies at the base of the glacier again and the mob on the north side of the lake. Later in the evening we spot 5 bulls on the bench downstream and to the north of camp. This is the same area we had seen bulls the previous day. The one big chocolate bull continues to haunt us and we spend time attempting to pick out a route that would gain us access to the bench but everything we see is too steep for free climbing and the river crossing looks hazardous to say the least.
That evening we decide to hunt the north fork. We would leave early and hike up the glacier opposite where we expect to find the bulls James had mentioned. We left early the next day and hiked to the confluence. The thought of the big chocolate bull plus 4 others on the other side of the river was in my mind when I suggested we walk the quarter mile downstream opposite of the bulls and look more closely for a climbing route. We left our food and extra clothing at the confluence and hiked down to a small point opposite the flat which held the bulls. Here is an image looking across at the flat.
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Joe is carrying my Leica 1200 and informs me it is 450 yards to where the biggest bull came out the previous evening. We decide to build a rock shooting rest and wait for the big chocolate bull. The weather is unsettled and constantly changing from sunny and hot to windy and cool. The temperature drops enough that we decide to hike back to retrieve our gear left at the confluence. We only walk a short distance before Joe spots a tahr on the hillside.
It’s around 3:30 when the bull appears in the scrub, actually closer than we had expected. We were shooting uphill at ~25 degrees and the bull ranged at 430 yards. We waited 15 minutes for the big chocolate bull to work his way up a steep narrow shoot. We worried the bull would fall the 400 feet into the river. The bull climbed up and slightly to the left up out of the ravine. At the shot the bull crumbled and fell back into the ravine, we could see him kick a couple of times and then lay still. Joe was watching through the spotting scope and saw the impact on the shoulder but just a couple inches higher than ideal.
Just prior to the shoot two more bulls started out of the scrub about 200 yards further downstream. We figured they were the same two bulls we saw fighting with the large chocolate the previous evening. My shot at the chocolate didn’t seem to bother these two and they continued to feed upstream and uphill towards the tussock cleaning. Joe said I should shoot the larger of the two.
I was repositioning for the shot when Joe yells out that my bull is back up on his feet. I swing back on him and hit him again. This time Joe sees the shot hit the bull in the neck. I was surprised it was so far to the right but then I look around and see the wind has picked up and small gust are blowing up the canyon. It shouldn’t have surprised me the wind had been variable all day. The bull is now lying down and we can only see his head and Joe comments he doesn’t look like he has much left in him.
I set back up for the other two bulls, the range was 539 yards. The two bulls were about 20 feet apart in the open tussock. I had knocked down some of my rock rest with shuffling around and took a minute to place the rocks back in place. Using the top of the thick post I touched off another round and saw the ram go down – OOPS, my bad, the smaller of the two rams is down. I had targeted the wrong ram after shifting around.
The big chocolate ram has moved down about 10 yards and is standing. Joe can not see any blood from either the chest or the neck wound. I rush this shot and miss. He takes off into the scrub and is busting his way through. He stops next to a large rock and Joe is able to see his head. It takes me a minute to find him, reload, and settle in for a wait. It doesn’t take long before he takes a single step that puts his chest clearing in view. The distance has dropped to 330 yards. This shot hits him hard and he stumbles down 10 yards and kicks. He ends up hanging by a horn with his entire body suspended in the air, his belly facing up. Through the spotting scope we can see the horn is caught on a small root.
I shoot again at the second bull again because he is up and moving. Joe gave the distance as 590 yards. There are two other bigger bulls in front of him but I stay on the smaller wounded bull. He follows the other two into a dark canyon and disappears. We see the larger two bulls come out at the top and spot the other bull on a tiny ledge below. We never do get him.
We decide I have two excellent bulls down and don’t want to loose the big chocolate. It had been raining daily and we feared more rain would take the bull down the face and into the river. We called James that evening and asked him to fly us out in the morning plus told him we hoped to make a retrieve.
The copter arrived the next morning at 10:30. Joe jumped in with James and they headed down to retrieve the big chocolate. They confirmed there was no way to climb to the bull without ascent gear. They also confirmed there was no place near the bull to make a one skid landing.
James rotor was cutting vegetation when he told Joe to jump. There was a small, less steep, spot above the ram. He did his best spiderman imitation and grabbed the 8 inch high plants on the face. Moving down to the ram he found it hanging by the last inch of its one horn, it’s body dangling free above a very slight shelf prior to a 400 vertical foot drop into the river. It looked much worse once he was there than what we had thought. I couldn’t see him jump but could see the copter go in and then hover away from the face. The image below shows him hovering out from the face.
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Joe’s adrenaline was pumping from the time he arrived at the site. The leap out of the copter was bad but clinging to the face was even worse. He had his 10 inch blade pig sticking knife and had boasted the head would come off with two cuts. After 5 minutes with him on the face I knew there was trouble, after 10 minutes I was genuinely worried. With one hand hold the horn and root, he used the other to chop through a vertebrate. Numerous times he could feel the horn and root slip and realized he would fall if the ram came loose but was so impressed with the bull he didn’t want to loose him. The head finally came loose and the body caught on the small ledge.
The job was only half done, Joe still needed to get into the copter and all the while holding onto the tahr head. James moved in for the pick up a little further up the face. While reaching for the skid a wind gust moved the copter, this was visible to me from the landing site. He moved away and waited a minute and gave it another try. This time Joe made the grab, James held the bird steady until he climbed inside. After landing to pick me up I heard Joe say more than once this was the most dangerous thing he had ever done.
The ram was 11 years old with only the tips of his horns broken off; his 11 inch spread made him an exceptional trophy. As you may imagine I don’t have photos of the ram on the cliff or photos of the retrieve. Obviously there wasn’t an extensive examination of the wounds but Joe did comment he didn’t see any wounds or blood on the animal.
I’m waiting for Joe’s 35 mm film for more photos. I’ve set up for the two tahr heads, one cape, and a chammy head and cape to be shipped in by:
Vern Pearson
980 Poihipi Rd.
RD#1 Tau Po
This was a great area to hunt. In hindsight I should have sat on the opposite hillside looking back toward where I had sat. Looking north would have provided a better view and would have kept the sun out of my face. A view looking north from 20 yards above the kill spot is shown below. Bill’s property line is only 20 feet north of where I sat. 
