My brother Tom (a.k.a Haas) had been putting his name down for Department of Conservation tahr hunting blocks that are drawn by ballot each year. This year his name was drawn and he was allocated the Lord Range for the last week of May 2014. The news went out and his long time friend and hunting buddy Pete, who lives in Gisborne, responded within an hour simply with his flight details.
A friend and colleague of Pete’s, Grant, would be joining us too. Grant has a huge amount of hunting experience, including tahr. Although a couple of years’ our senior, he was rumoured to be extremely fit and likely to put us all to shame going up and down the mountains.
I travelled from London for the trip and would be the only one who had not previously shot a tahr. My brother, Pete and I had spent a few days in the Dobson valley a few years ago and I had had a couple of opportunities, however the gun I had borrowed turned out to be shooting a few inches up and to the left even at 100m. Unfortunately after sighting the gun in properly, we didn’t see any more tahr on that trip. Lesson #1: Sight your gun in BEFORE the hunt! (which we duly did)
The block is accessible only by helicopter and access is only permitted during the 8 balloted weeks each year. Haas organised a chopper to take us in from a spot near Harihari on the West Coast, on the Saturday morning. We would be extracted the following Saturday. There are two campsites in the Lord Range block - one at 1000m and another at 1360m, marked with stars on the map below. In winter you need to stick to the lower campsite (red star). The advantage of camping so high in the mountains is that you will be closer to the tahr, which can generally be found in the 1300-2000m range depending on the snow. The price to pay is that it will be cold - this is an alpine environment where temperatures can be expected to drop below zero, particularly at night.
Sunday Night in Harihari
Our chopper for Saturday morning was postponed until Monday because of inclement weather. Instead of driving on Friday night or early Saturday morning, we spent an extra day in Christchurch getting our equipment organised and drove to Harihari on Sunday. Mother nature was doing her best to stop us from getting to the tahr - a massive slip had closed the Arthur’s Pass route and so we had to take the long route via the Lewis Pass instead.
After checking into our rooms at the Harihari Motor Inn we met up in the bar for a few beers. There were a couple of other hunting groups there, as well as a “man-hunter” in the form of Pinkie, a colourful local who introduced herself by accidentally & wordlessly pouring her drink on one of our party. Another local cut to the chase asking us first if any of us were unmarried, and when none of us were, moved immediately on to trying to sell us her house. We talked to some other hunters and heard about a group that had been in the mountains for 10 days but only had 2.5 hours of hunting because of the bad weather. Another group was seven days overdue to be extracted by the helicopter because of the weather. Omens that we learnt to appreciate in good time…
Monday
Monday morning was a glorious sunny day in Harihari and we were taken to our campsite in the Lord range in two loads by helicopter, flying a low route over the Wanganui river. We were deposited at the 1000m campsite where there was about 30cm of snow, through which bushes and tussock were poking through. It took a couple of hours to set up our tents and we decided to go for a half-day hunt in the afternoon. 
All four of us headed as a group east & upwards towards Swift Water. The snow made it hard going, particularly when it gave way and you’d drop to your knee or hip and then have to pull yourself out. There was an ice face we had to ascend on the other side of Swift Water and my brother paved the way after three attempts to make the top. Without ice-picks or crampons we were forced to just bash holes in the ice with the toes or heels of our boots. We could afford to be brazen with this ice wall because if you slipped you just ended up back down at the creek - the ice wall Pete and Grant faced the next day was less forgiving.
Just as we were considering turning around to head back to camp Grant spotted a bull tahr coming around a rock 70 metres below us. We all froze and after some whispered exchanges, I was told it was my shot. The tahr was standing still looking straight at us. I put a .243 round into its chest; its front legs buckled and it dropped to the ground. The guys all shook my hands and congratulated me on joining the tahr club. Pete and I went down to dress the animal while my brother and Grant had a look around the corner.
It was a young bull with a beautiful dark coat, the horns being perhaps 9 inches. (If it had been 12+ inches it may not have been mine to shoot!) Under Pete’s tutelage I skinned it and took out the back straps. Pete removed the hind quarters and then we had to get moving because the light was already beginning to fade.
Back at camp we had a celebratory Speights. The air temperature was below zero and dropping. The beer got noticeably colder in the can as you drank it. We cooked rice risotto and then had a couple of whiskeys. Haas made us some nice warm home-made mulled wine before we retired to our tents around 9.30pm.
Monday Night
It was bloody cold - our estimates were between -10 and -20 degrees. Condensation on the inside walls of our tents froze, our boots froze, the water pouch in my pack froze. My brother’s canvas gaiters froze to the point of being unusable the rest of the trip.
When I had to take a leak at 4.30am it took me 10 minutes to put on three pairs of socks, thermal leggings, two pairs of fleece trousers, three merino thermal top layers, a fleece jacket, a woolly hat, merino glove inners and ski gloves. My sleeping bag was rated “comfortable” at -5 deg C. I kept a single base layer of thermals on and was ok. It was certainly an opportunity to learn about the mechanics of sleeping bags. Lesson #2: if your wear a lot of clothes in your sleeping bag then you actually stop the sleeping bag from working and you can be colder than if you wear less. In particular, your feet aren’t very good at heating themselves so you should not wear socks! Under milder conditions these things don’t really matter as much but at the temperatures we were dealing with these tips made a big difference.
In the morning we compared stories about how cold it had been - some of us had had less sleep than others. Nevertheless it was another glorious clear day and we decided to split into two groups for a full day’s hunt.
Tuesday - Pete & Grant
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| Note the glacier in the background |
Pete and Grant went way up above Swift Creek, climbing to 1800m. They had to traverse an ice wall, and this time Grant had brought his ice axe with him and put it to good use, except for one moment when Pete accidentally clipped his knee with it - ouch.
From their 1800m vantage point Pete spotted a bull tahr down at 1500m and so they duly descended again. Pete lined it up with this .270 and shot it. Grant had the bull in his cross-hairs too, just in case (“all I could see was fur!”), but his .300 Weatherby had a very light trigger and immediately after Pete’s shot, Grant accidentally unleashed a .300 calibre torrent of destruction into the Tahr’s chest too.
After these shots a big bull, just shy of 12 inches as it would turn out, appeared on the ridge above them at around 1800m. Grant shot it at a distance of 340m, as well as another two nanny’s that appeared around the ridge to see what was going on. Grant left his gun with Pete, who was caping his bull, and ran up the mountain with his knife, camera and pack to retrieve his trophy.
Unfortunately when he got there the tough old bull was on the move, and a number of other tahr appeared as well. Grant had his camera but not his gun so took a lot of shots but no kills.
After briefly contemplating attacking the bull with his ice-axe, Grant returned down the hill, got his gun, then re-ascended to shoot the bull. With light fading Grant only had time to take photos of his trophy and then had to get back down to Pete and head with him back to camp. Grant’s preferred method of descent was sliding down the ice using the ice-axe as a brake, as can be seen in the background of the photo below.
Their load was very heavy and it was dark, so they deposited the cape and meat near Swift Water creek for retrieval the next day.
Tuesday - Haas & Myself
We decided to head up and across to Mad Creek, westwards from the camp. It was very hard going and we encountered all sorts of interesting terrain but no tahr. Lesson #3: Stick to slopes that have been glassed and confirmed to contain game! Some parts of the climb required pulling your feet out of deep snow with each step, other areas were boulder fields both large and small, where some technical 'rock hopping' was required.
At other times we were climbing steep bushy faces by pulling ourselves up using the branches that were sticking through the snow.
On the bright side, our views were spectacular and we enjoyed a lot of midday sun. The campsite does not get any sun because of the high peaks to the north. Due to the frozen nature of the water, we used ingenious methods of procuring hydration - see photo (collecting a line of drips from melting snow)
When we started to get into sign, it was too much of a risk to push forward. We’d gone quite far and it was getting on in the day. Being injured descending would mean a possibly a life-threatening night on the southern alps.
Tuesday Night
Milder than the previous night - perhaps only -5 degrees. We did, however, receive the forecast for the next day via satellite phone, which was for a front to move through starting around 3pm and lasting for 12 hours. Gale force winds and heavy rain were on the way.
Wednesday
Haas decided to target the camp tahr which was loitering on the other side of the valley.
1.5 hrs up the side, Grant saw a bull tahr on a bluff directly above them, 250m away. Haas quickly took a firing position, still slightly puffed. After shooting a full magazine from his .270 the bull sat down and wasn’t going anywhere - possibly a 40% hit ratio. The rifle must have had some knocks on the rough terrain. Afterwards, when in Kaikoura it was shooting 10 inches top right @ 100m.
Grant was keenly eyeing up the bull tahr for the "finishing blow" with the .300. His light trigger finger did not initiate this time…
One of the first few shots must have been a lung shot and took some time to slow down - these are tough animals with 8-11mm thick skin. The bullet had gone through one shoulder and was found just under the skin on the other side when skinning the beast.
Grant went over the ridge to find the target bull, but he had escaped. A kea took a lot of interest in Haas and his bull while he was dressing it (right photo).
The rain and wind that afternoon was quite gentle and we sat in the big tent pre-celebrating Pete’s birthday with some whiskey and mulled wine. It was cold but we were in good spirits (except for the Campari which was judged not to be a good spirit by everyone else)
At about 9pm we retired to our tents. I decided to stay in the big canvas tent with my brother because of the high winds that were forecast - the black “Ministry of Sound” festival tent was not designed for gale force alpine winds. Ironically it turned out to be the only tent that survived unscathed…
Wednesday Night
I woke around midnight to extremely loud winds pummelling the tent and blowing around what sounded like a lot of loose canvas outside. The tent was partially collapsed, about half the size it should have been. Being a waterproof tent it was still dry inside but there was some water being blown up through the bottom of the window flaps. We put on thermals & waterproofs and went outside.
The veranda section of the tent was completely loose and flapping about in the wind - we fixed it to the ground rather than attempt to put it back up properly. We lifted the main poles of the tent, which had sunk into the mud, and got the tent back to about 70-80% of its normal size. We double pegged the upwind guy ropes and tied down the window flaps, then returned back into the tent and tried nervously to fall asleep.
At 4.30am the winds were at their fiercest and the windward side of the tent had caved in again - we were down to perhaps 60% of normal size. With the benefit of jet lag making me quite alert at this time of night, I went out for an hour to sort things out. I re-set the pegs, poles and ropes and added more ropes to hold the thing together. Notably a section of the veranda that had been pinned to the ground by a 20kg+ rock had been blown loose again by the wind… After fixing everything the tent was still quite askew but it seemed to be withstanding the gales fairly robustly so I finally felt I could get back inside and get some sleep.
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A gale-hardened Kiwi Camper tent (top left), a wrecked tent (bottom left) and two surviving tents (right)
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About an hour later Pete joined us - the wind had been buffeting the fly against the inner of his tent and then him, depositing water on him every time and drenching his sleeping bag. Without Pete in his tent to hold it up, the wind had a good go at wrecking it during the course of the rest of the night, managing even to bend the poles.
Grant’s Macpac tent held up well except for a brief moment when the fly came loose at one end, but double-looping the pegs sorted that out quickly. Unfortunately the torrent of mud that was flowing through the campsite seized that brief opportunity to fill his dry camp boots.
Thursday
The horizontal rain and gale force winds had washed away the snow and made the terrain seem much more accessible, but with a southerly change forecast we knew the next night would be cold again.
Lesson #3: if you’re camping in the alps, make sure you have alpine rated tents! (Ministry of Sound UK festival tents seem outwardly to hold up well but the “ventilation mesh” at the top will let horizontal rain in.)
Friday
Grant very kindly offered to let us hunt on some land he co-owns up towards Kaikoura. We were lucky that evening and came upon some fallow deer on the first ridge behind the ranch house. I shot one and, once more with Pete’s fine guidance, gutted it and turned it into a backpack by locking the front legs into the gap between the tendon and bone of the hind legs - a very clever way to carry a deer out of the bush. The only slight drawback being a bit of a mess on the back of your trousers.
Saturday
The next morning we went out again. After emptying seven rounds on previous deer with no hits, due to Haas's .270 being off, he borrowed Grant’s .308 and redeemed himself with two from two.
We took the back straps and legs, and walked back to the ranch to complete our massive haul of trophies & meat for the week.
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| Legging it back home |
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| A small selection of the meat |
Mike Mueller, London UK, June 2014
