usual photo and video session , and headskinned him and salted the cape for mounting .
After climbing once again back up the ridge , this time we headed towards a big valley we had not investigated before . Charles spotted two young chamois bucks and I filmed them for a while . Then I saw a good-looking buck about 30 yards from them and asked Charles if he wanted to shoot it . He placed himself in a good shooting position but the buck wandered into some scrub , though he was still visible . Again Charles wanted to use his . 308 , though the distance was a good 300 yards so I suggested aiming high on the shoulder . His second shot was true and the buck went down for the count . After negotiating some rough country on the way down we found it was a nice 9½ ” buck and Charles could not help another Cheshire cat grin .
After removing head , headskin and meat we slowly made our way back to camp . It had been another long day as we didn ’ t arrive until 10.15 pm . We had chamois backsteaks with onions for dinner along with rice , curry and butter . This all went down well with some red wine and grappa ( a kind of
brandy made from grapeskins after the juice has been pressed out ).
Next morning after the usual porridge with honey and powdered milk we climbed up again into some more beautiful chamois country and suddenly Andrew spotted a buck just 70 yards away . Unfortunately I stuffed things up by being seen by the animal while moving into position . A couple of bounds and he was gone , into a gut , and though I ran up close we never saw him again . I was very annoyed with myself for such a silly mistake .
Most of the morning we had been in fog that came and went intermittently , but it cleared just as we came over the pass and looked into the valley where we ’ d hunted on our second day . This time our vantage point was a lot higher and we sat down to glass . I spotted a chamois at 200 yards and despatched it with a good shot . It was an 8¾ ” buck . After taking care of it we decided to have a sleep and dozed off under a fly that Charles had brought along .
An hour and a half later we were woken by a kea and climbed back up to the pass , arriving back at camp about 7 pm in good time for the 7.30 radio sched . We arranged for James to pick us up next morning and had tinned ravioli and spaghetti bolognese ( with vino again of course ) for dinner . After dark we tried firing a few tracer rounds through my 300 Weatherby and they were pretty impressive .
“… six chamois shot and trophies all round .”
We were up at 6 am in expectation of a 9 am pickup but the weather had other ideas and the fog hung round for most of the day . We kept all our gear packed up except the fly , which was ready for a quick last-minute removal . After a long , rather boring wait James was finally able to pick us up at 7.30 pm , bringing to an end a very successful and enjoyable trip – six chamois shot and trophies all round .
More spendid hunting country around the Karangarua tops
NZ Hunting & Wildlife 196 - Autumn 2017 41