Alex Broad – Andrew Becomes A Man

It had been a very very long time since I had last been hunting and I was in need of some recoil therapy.

My fishing Buddy Andrew happened to know a top bloke over in the wairarapa who was running a farm that was infested with goats and the odd deer.  A few phone calls and Michael, the manager, was more than happy to take us out for a look around the farm.

Andrew hadn’t hunted before but was keen as mustard to get amongst it and see what it was all about.  The first mission was to see if the resident mob of reds were home,  No luck there, so we continued on spying a few goats here and there, but after a recent bomb up they were pretty sketchy.

It wasn’t long before we were set up shooting across a gully at a small mob in the gorse.  Michael quickly secured his first goat, quickly followed by myself, then it was Andrews turn.  I thrust the rifle into his hands and got him lined up on his target.  “how hard does it kick?” I replied with “hold it tight, you’ll know when its gone off.  The triggers pretty light too”.   Andrew let rip and knocked over his first goat, he was stoked to say the least.  A tricky shot, with the wind howling up the gully and Andrew resting over his knees.

We carried on finding ourselves in a similar situation shooting across another gully, a few more goats secured, when out of the blue I noticed a tan “goat” walking up the ridge opposite us.  I brought the rifle up only to see that it was a lone fallow hind.  Michael had been working on this farm for only a couple months and hadn’t seen any fallow yet, but was absolutely wrapped to spy this one.  He gave me the all clear to let her have the good news, but she must have known what was going on, she carried on up the ridge without stopping and didn’t give me a shot.

We headed off the long way home and stopped to bomb up another mob in some pines, another goat each, a quick photo and a reminder of how much Ongaonga hurts!

Andrew was wrapped with his first hunt, and now he can officially call himself a man.

Good on ya mate!