Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Predators and Varmints New Zealand goats are varmints

I was in New Zealand the last couple of weeks working and some friends invited me down to some deer/pig/feral goat hunting.

I was hunting some planted pine forests that bordered the sheep and dairy farms outside of Piopio, New Zealand. I got a couple of pictures on my phone but forgot my digital camera in the truck. We walked the forest blocks and jumped four separate mobs of goats (about 25 animals total) during the hunt. I wound up shooting 11 of them including 2 good billies but one of them fell into a deep ravine and I was not climbing down there just for a picture. The friends I hunted with were gracious enough to let me do all the shooting, including handing me another loaded rifle when I ran mine dry so that I could continue shooting.

I started out with a Tikka T3 in 270 Win and also shot some of them with a Remington Model 7 in 260 Rem. If I had my own rifles I probably would have gotten a few more but the right handed bolts, slow me down a lot.

This is feral goat culling as the country has 100,000s of wild goats competing with all the farm stock for pasture land. The idea is to kill as many as possible and the normal method is to spot and stalk the mobs and positioning yourself to shoot the adult nannies and billies as quickly as possible then finish the rest of the young ones.

Here are a couple of adult nannies that fell near each other:


And the biggest of the two billies, he had about 26"-28" spread on his horns: