Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game New Zealand Thar Hunt

A couple of years ago, a mate of mine (George) was sitting in Abu Dhabi airport waiting for a connecting flight back to New Zealand. In amongst all the foreign voices he picked up one with a Kiwi accent.

He had a few hours to kill, so sat down beside the other Kiwi bloke (Russell) and introduced himself. They got on real well, and soon learned that both of them were keen hunters. Russell is from the South Island, and offered to organise a Thar trip into the Southern Alps if George could organise a Fallow Deer hunt in the North Island.

"No worries" says George, who gives me a ring when he gets home and last November saw the three of us hunting Fallow Deer in the Wanganui River region.

We had sort of forgotten about Russell's offer when he rang up George last March and told us to book our plane tickets, the Thar trip was on.

So at the end of April George and I were flying from Hamilton (North Island) to Christchurch (South Island). Russell picked us up from the airport, we stayed the night at his place and next day we are heading south for a five day / four night Thar hunt.

The helicopter ride was fun (but then again they always are), and the four of us (including Russell's son Greg) were soon unloading tons of gear into an old musterers hut which was to be our home for the next four nights. Russell had hunted this area before, but mainly in November / December so we weren't sure what would be happening at this time of year.

George and I were keen, and as we had a couple of hours of light left we decided to have a quick look around. We went down river from the hut, and then up a big side stream. You may note that the word 'UP' gets used a bit in this story, there was to be quite a lot of 'UP' over the next few days (one of the disadvantages in being based on the river).

Glassing a big tussock face a mile or so away with the light fading, George says "There's one, no two..., three..., four!" Four Red deer (one stag and three hinds) were grazing across the face. This would be a bit of a bonus we thought, and headed in their direction. Unfortunately the light beat us, but it was nice to know that there was some venison around.

To be continued...

Here's the hut...

Day 2:

The morning dawned overcast and misty, but we weren't here to sit inside all day so off (and UP) we went. George and I elected to go high, while Russell and Greg would go up river to a couple of vantage points that Russell knew of to check out the headwaters of the river.

Up we went with the mist coming and going all day. We climbed up the big face where we had seen the deer the previous evening (so sign of them), and traversed across the head basins of a couple of catchments that drained down to the river where the hut was.





Visibility came and went as the mist rolled around, but finally in a nice clear break we spotted out first Thar. This picture is at 950 yards, you can see the the main group of Thar at the bottom left. There were some decent sized bulls in the mob.



The problem was that we were on the rim on the east side of the basin, and the Thar were near the botton of the basin on the west side. We had about two hours of daylight left, which didn't give us enough time to go right around the top and get above them. A direct approach was out of the question as it was just an open rocky face between us and them. Then the mist rolled in....

Before the mist hit us, we had enough time to see a large pile of rocks about 300 yards below us. Once it came down we made a beeline for the rocks, safely getting there courtesy of the mist.

Within five minutes the mist lifted, and the Thar were still happily grazing. Range was now 620 yards, and there was another nice pile of rocks another 300 yards closer to the Thar...

About 10 minutes later right on schedule the next lot of mist rolled in, and we repeated the previous process. This new rock pile had a nice flat rock that could have been mistaken for a bench rest.

We got set up on that and waited for the mist to lift. And waited....and waited.... and waited....

Two hours later and the #@%$ mist was still down. We are two or three hours from the hut with about an hour of light left, and we hadn't been on the route back before, so we make the unpleasant decision to pack up and head home. Still, at least we knew that there were some animals around.

To be continued...

Day 3:

Russell and Greg had spotted some Thar in the distance on day two, so we all decided to head upstream and do some serious glassing. It was a beautiful day, this is looking upstream.



And this is looking downstream towards the hut.



Another couple of photos





Here we are looking for the elusive Thar...



George climbed up to a high point and had a snooze for a couple of hours. When we got back to the hut that night he was missing his sunglasses, and realised that they were still on top of the hill where he'd had a sleep. They were 'Dirty Dog' brand sunglasses, so the hill was now named 'Dirty Dog Hill'. More on Dirty Dog hill later.

Dirty Dog hill is that close high point on the right hand side...


Despite all our efforts no Thar were spotted on Day 3.

Day 4:

Another cracker day weather wise.



Russell and Greg headed upstream again determined to find some Thar in the headwaters. George and I split up, George going downstream while I crossed the river and went directly up (and I mean UP) the other side. There was a big tussock bench that we had seen the previous day that needed investigation, and a good sized stream running along the end of it. The whole place screamed deer, but all I found was old poop and footprints.

George had lunch with a bull Thar. He'd sat himself down to eat his sandwhich for lunch, and kept thinking that he was getting wiffs of something 'goaty' (as he put it). After half an hour he'd finished lunch, and decided to just peak over the side of the big bluff that he was near the edge of. Mr Bull Thar takes exception to this, and rockets off down the near vertical bluff system as easily as you or I would walk along a concrete footpath. No chance of a shot, but he picked him up a mile away across the river in his binos, and Mr Bull Thar was still on the move.

Russell and Greg again came back empty-handed.


Day 5:

Last full day and it's blowing - really BLOWING. On the eastern side of the Southern Alps the north westerly wind is a Foehn wind, a rain shadow wind that has dropped all it's moisture on the western side of the range, and now accelerates and warms as it blasts down the eastern slopes. The old hut was shaking, but it had been here over 100 years (based on the dates carved into the walls), so we didn't think that this little blow would shift it.

George and I headed out to where we had seen the mob of Thar on day 2, while Russell and Greg headed up to where George had had lunch with Mr Bull Thar the previous day.

George and I were walking with the wind coming in at about 10 a'clock, and sometimes it literally almost blew you off your feet. Half way up a patricularly steep bit, we sat down out of the wind for a breather. Looking across we could see Dirty Dog hill a couple of miles away, in fact we were above it and could look down at the top. George joked that he would look and see if his sunglasses were on the top (I assurred him that they would be blown away by now).

He put the binos up, and slaps them right onto a Thar on the side of Dirty Dog hill. That meant that a change of plan was in order. This was our last day and we didn't really want to go home empty handed, so Dirty Dog hill, here we come. (George, ever the optimist, said that even if we didn't get a Thar, he would still get his sunglasses).

An hour later sees us carefully peaking around the side of Dirty Dog hill. There were three Thar about 400 yards away, tucked up in a small gully out of the wind. We were in full wind from three o'clock (and it was really blowing now) so shooting from here wasn't an option. We climbed to the top (yes, George did find his sunglasses), then circled around the back of Dirty Dog hill and managed to climb down the side of a ridge where we were relatively sheltered.

Peaking up over the top of this ridge showed our three Thar at 210 yards. Let the show begin...

Four shots later we had our three Thar down. Getting down to them wasn't easy as the terrain was near vertical. We took the usual hero pictures, then took all the backlegs and backsteaks along with the best skin. They were a young bull and a couple of nannies, and made excellent eating.

It was pretty steep...



The next day the weather looked like it would get worse so we were packed up early, and just as well as the kerosene burner turned up early for that very reason. Another chopper ride and we were back in civilisation, already planning a chamois trip for the following summer.

Nice pics, covering some miles there!

Mike,couple of questions. How much mountain goat is in your family lineage???
Question 2. Are you up to speed on the Suckitude scale???
Standard envy-You Suck
Extra envy-you Officially Suck
Extreme envy-you Turbosuck
EXTRA extreme envy-you Ludicrous Suck
Supreme extra extreme envy-you ludicrous double plus Suck
I would say you are VERY close to Ludicrous double plus Suck!!!!

Excellent read, thanks for sharing!

Something's on the dole.

Thanks for the great report and pics!

Really cool report and pictures.

I will hunt there someday!

Gorgeous.

Thanks for sharing.

Great pics, Mike- Thanks for sharing!

NZ is top of my list for foriegn hunts. I WILL get there!

Thanks for sharing these photos and story. What a trip.

Just got back from that country about 4-5 months ago, myself. Incredible those Southern Alps are. Really reminds me of Alaska.

Great report and pics.

Quite an adventure - thanks for sharing.

Great report and photos of some beautiful country, Thank you!

Hey Mike! Very cool hunt, great pics and story...

A couple of the photos seem to have got lost in Photobucket, here they are...

Great story and beautiful pictures.