Team member hunts

This is a yarn about co-founder Jarrod's second Tahr rut hunt, a follow on from the previous yarn.

The weather forecast was looking good for the bois a few days prior to them loading their gear into James Scotts 500 and leaving the normal world behind for a few days. Joining Jarrod was his good mate Jase who is defiantly not shy when it comes to a rowdy mission. Saturday rolled around which was the first day of their Tahr ballot block, the weather forecast still remained a ripper, it was looking like 5 days of bluebird weather. The lads had a block in the Landsborough river that they had not been into before so excitement was high. As most fly-in trips start with, a sold base camp was made, team member Alex had lent them his MIA which was bloody ripper because this campsite didn't see the sun for the whole week so the fire was epic. 

The first-afternoon hunt had the lads shooting up a side creek close to base camp to gain some elevation and have a look into a nice tussock face, the creek was super frozen as it was in the cold side of the mountain so it made for slow going. After a few hours of a pretty easy grind had us up on the top ridge we wanted to get to, it was now approaching late evening so it was prime time for some Bulls to come out of the nearby scrub. It didn't take long before we spotted a bull hanging around with half a dozen nannies over on a nearby face. The bois were pretty fizzed up, it had not taken long to get eyes on a bull, we had a good inspection through the spotter and it didn't take long to work out he was a shooter. Jase jumped behind the rifle for this one, he set up and got dialed in before letting a pill from his 7mm mag go in the direction of this nice bull. We couldn't believe it really, our trips usually play out something like the last night turns into some big mission trying to find a shooter, so it was nice for a change that we had found a shooter on day one. We finished out the evening in the same spot looking for bulls with no more luck. We chucked on the headlights and made our way over towards the downed bull. He was a ripper, a nice mature bull with some awesome character. We spent a good half an hour just soaking in the scenes, a beautiful still evening with a clear sky, it was hard to beat. After the meat and skin recovery was done, we hit the ridge back down to our base camp for a chill-out and some dinner.

Day two was another cracker, they loaded up some overnight gear and set off for the tops. The plan was to stay up high and hunt some of the harder to access country that had nice scrubby fingers also with some nice bluffs. A terrible bush bash for a few hours had them up on the tops, they found a nice campsite, set up for the night, and then set off for the evening hunt. A pretty uneventful evening really didn't see any bulls, just a few nannies. They went back to camp, had some food, and made a plan for the morning. Day three was another bluebird day, they went to the same vantage point for the morning to make sure they haven't missed any bulls. To the lad's surprise, they started to see bulls up in the bluffs, which either turned up overnight or they had missed them, but either way, it was a good start to day three. A number of bulls were assessed and some nice old bois were spotted but nothing that warranted taking an animal's life, so we took some shots with the cameras and carried on for the rest of the afternoon/evening. The lads decided they were happy enough with assessing all the animals in this area so they decided to pack up camp and head back to base by headlight. They thought the dense bush was bad during the day, but the night bush bashing was next level, a few hours later they were able to get back out of the bush and into the MIA for a brew and a feed.

For the remaining days, the lads spent hunting the rest of the block, seeing plenty of bulls. Nothing that ticked the box though, but still epic to see. The weather was still blue-sky and crisp days. They also got to witness a hillside extraction of the boys in the block on the opposite side of the river, they got into a bluffed situation and had to punch the EPIRB. Never good to see but good on them for having the gear.

The fly-out morning wasn't good weather-wise, the in-reach was blowing up with mates saying the weather was coming in for the next 4 days, make sure you get out. A few messages to James had to confidence drop right down as he said there was a good chance he cant get in over the top ridge to get us. We were running low on coffee and chocolate, so any more days would have been tough. We were never so stoked to hear the sound of his 500 coming down the river, he had managed to find an opening to come in. A quick load of the 500 had him pulling the collective and we were out of there. This marked the end of the lad's trip, a nice bull on the deck, bloody good catchup, and epic weather made for a ripper of a trip.

For the full video, head over to the video content page.

Cheers for taking the time to check out the yarn, Jarrod.