hugheserj
Well-Known Member
Just back from a recent hunt in South Westland, New Zealand for Bull Tahr on public land. We flew in and self guided (which is mostly the norm for locals here) for a week.
We stayed in an MIA tent which I cant recommend enough for anyone that can fly or 4x4 to their camp (maybe packhorse too?).
Anyway, after waiting a few days for the weather to clear we got a window to fly and were very pleased to have five good days of weather ahead of us.
I have recently had a 30 Nosler built which I may do a separate post on, but I was looking forward to seeing how this rifle performed. We walked for up to 10km and climbed 1000m vertical each day and passed up a lot of bulls along the way that were either too young or would not be accessible to recover if we shot them in the steep country.
On the last morning we found a decent bull and as my mate had shot a good trophy last year, it was my turn to pull the trigger and try out the 30 Nosler. The rifle was outstanding and although I was only shooting at 200m TBR (steep downhill) I was able to spot the impact. I've had this Zeiss V8 for a while on a few rifles over the years so I'm very comfortable with this scope. The 230gr Berger OTM did everything I'd hoped for. The bull was instantly dead, not a kick or even a twitch. This is important as bull tahr are renowned for being hard to kill and will often run off cliffs or into unrecoverable spots once hit. The mushroomed projectile was sitting under the offside skin and I weighed the retained mass at around 80gr.
The bull ended up being 10.5 years old and only had 3 teeth left, making a trophy I can be proud of.
Happy to do a separate thread on the rifle build and pros/cons of what I selected if that's of interest.
We stayed in an MIA tent which I cant recommend enough for anyone that can fly or 4x4 to their camp (maybe packhorse too?).
Anyway, after waiting a few days for the weather to clear we got a window to fly and were very pleased to have five good days of weather ahead of us.
I have recently had a 30 Nosler built which I may do a separate post on, but I was looking forward to seeing how this rifle performed. We walked for up to 10km and climbed 1000m vertical each day and passed up a lot of bulls along the way that were either too young or would not be accessible to recover if we shot them in the steep country.
On the last morning we found a decent bull and as my mate had shot a good trophy last year, it was my turn to pull the trigger and try out the 30 Nosler. The rifle was outstanding and although I was only shooting at 200m TBR (steep downhill) I was able to spot the impact. I've had this Zeiss V8 for a while on a few rifles over the years so I'm very comfortable with this scope. The 230gr Berger OTM did everything I'd hoped for. The bull was instantly dead, not a kick or even a twitch. This is important as bull tahr are renowned for being hard to kill and will often run off cliffs or into unrecoverable spots once hit. The mushroomed projectile was sitting under the offside skin and I weighed the retained mass at around 80gr.
The bull ended up being 10.5 years old and only had 3 teeth left, making a trophy I can be proud of.
Happy to do a separate thread on the rifle build and pros/cons of what I selected if that's of interest.
