| My First Goat |
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| Written by Keith | |
| Monday, 29 June 2009 | |
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Grant (Macca) kindly offered me the chance to come and shoot my first goat after hearing that I had no shot a goat before. I've shot most other game on offer in NSW goats and deer being about the only ones that I can think of that I haven't shot in the state.
We initially tried to go out for a hunt the week before but I caught the flu and wasn't going anywhere. After reschedualing for the next Friday we were set. In the mean time I had to develop a load for my new 260rem that I got from Hiwall. It is a Ruger 77mkII sporter-weight wood blued. I had tried to go to the range the week before but had gotten the OAL wrong with the projectiles I was using so I watched GriMo aka Sam sight in his Ruger 243. Fast forward to the day before the hunt I am at the range. Thinking that the rifle would be sighted in enough to hit paper at 100m I wasted my first five shots trying to get it right. Then onto the 50m it was hitting about 1ft low. Fixed it up with the 2nd load I got to shoot my two hotter loads at 100 after an OK group with the hottest load (ADI Max in this instance) I was somewhat satisfied for goat sized targets. . . I thought. . Friday rolls around and in the morning I load up 50 shots using the load I had worked on the day before. Pack my stuff up and away I go down the hume highway to the Southern Highlands. I roll into Macca's place we have a bit of a chinwag and he shows me some of the toys in his safe. I must say macca has a very nice precision rifle collection . . . I was jealous and now my head is ticking over. After our meet and perve on his collection we pack his ute and off we go to the property we will be hunting on. 20 minutes later we are there and it is a beautiful property. About 10 minutes after being on the property we creep forward over a hill and spot the afternoon's main quarry. A quick reverse back and I unpack the 260rem and we try to close in on the goats. My heart is pumping now. I was thinking wow not even here for 15 minutes and I'm onto my first goats I never thought it would be this easy. Well at 200 odd yards away I miss... Twice. Now I have realised that it wasn't going to be easy I put it down to nerves and a heartbeat that was moving the crosshairs. . We move on and I'm quite embarrassed after just meeting Macca and missing two normally easy shots. I summised what must be going through his head. . . "Geez this bloke can't hit the side of a barn" The pressure was on too after hearing the distances that Macca regularly shoots. After that we walk over to where I had shot at the goats to see if any of my shots connected . . We couldn't see any sign of blood or anything like that so its fair to say both my shots missed. We went over to a ridge and decided to glass over the hills to see if we could see them. We spotted a pair of goats about 350-400 yards away on the next hill and decided to take a shot. This time the distance was serious. I hadn't seriously shot at these sorts of distances before so it was about to be an education. I missed 4 times at the nanny and we worked out that my rifle was shooting way off to the right. I don't know whether it got bumped in transit or what but it was shooting to the right and if I wanted a goat I'd need to deal with it. The type of country we were shooting in: Attachment: BS3.jpg [ 111.14 KiB | Not viewed yet ] We then saw a larger mob above where I had just been shooting and they were about 450-500yds away and we decided with daylight fading to see what they do as there was some big billys in this mob. They seemed to be moving closer to where we were and we decided to wait until they got to 300 yards before I'd take a shot at the black and white billy. Well he didn't get to 300 yards and as light was fading we decided I'd take the shot anyway. Now this is where the memory gets quite hazy. I can't remember which shot hit him but I had 3 shots before he pulled up... He wasn't down but was standing still and wasn't moving. I had one more round on me and I tried to finish him but didn't hit him. We had decided to use the remaining light to go over and see if I did infact hit him and finish him off if necessary. After a bit of a walk towards his direction I made the comment to Grant that it was like bloody mountain goat territory. . I guess it was. We had found him lying where he had stopped he was still alive and I shot him again to finish him. I thanked Macca for the chance to go hunting with him and him helping me get my first goat. I also said he was going to hate me because I wanted to keep my first set of horns and there was no chance we were dragging him out of where he was as it was tough country with a steep walk up the hill so Grant kindly took his head off so I could keep the horns. The horns measured 25 inches tip to tip After the tiring walk back up the hill (felt like mount everest to me) it was time for some photo's of my trophy: Attachment: Keiths Goat 6.jpg [ 46.67 KiB | Not viewed yet ] Attachment: Keiths Goat 1.jpg [ 84.32 KiB | Not viewed yet ] It was dark by the time we had recovered old mate and took some photo's so we decided to hook up the spotlight and get my 222rem out to bust some varmints. Macca set the spotty up turned it on and the globe blew. Well that definitely put a dampener on the spotlighting section of the hunt. I wasn't too disappointed as I was still chuffed that I got my first goat and was more than happy to leave it at that. This is where Wolfeyes partially saved the day. I had bought it along as lets face it the wolfeyes sniper 260 is one hell of a handy torch and always good to carry around. Besides that I thought that Grant would like to have a gander of it anyways as I love seeing new toys and figured Macca would be the same. He says we can have a go with the Wolfeyes if you like. I said sure you never know. We had not travelled 100m before I pick up the unmistakeable red-orange glow of fox eyes around 50m away. I got Grant to hold the torch whilst I let the 222rem let rip and it was lights out for this beautiful Vixen: Attachment: BSFOX 2.jpg [ 127.44 KiB | Not viewed yet ] Attachment: BSFOX 1.jpg [ 130.57 KiB | Not viewed yet ] I always feel confident with the Winchest model 70 Heavy Varmint in 222rem it is my favourite rifle and cartridge so it was good to pick it up after 12 odd months after not using it and hit my first target with it. We then spotted a couple of bunnies that fell to the 222rem with some redmisting action. We didn't get a photo of them sorry guys. On the way back we spotted another fox and I had a shot at it and though we both thought it was a hit it was hard to tell at around 80 or 90m with just the Wolfeyes as to whether it was lights out for the fox or it just ran away really quickly. We couldn't find it after a quick look so unfortunately I have to call that one a miss! It was a great way to spend an afternoon. I got to meet another one of AV's members and go out hunting less than an hours drive from where I live so it couldn't really have been better! Thanks Macca (Grant) for your hospitallity and giving me the chance to come out and get another feral on my list. |
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