Outside of duck hunters and umbrella salesmen, few folks I know enjoy working in the rain. But last week, I flew to New Zealand to hunt at Glen Dene Station, owned by Richard and Sarah Burdon, and I loved every minute of it.
Most of my hunting didn't happen in the rain. But the bull tahr hunt? That one did. And it was a doozy.
Picture this: you claw your way up above the clouds, only to get sandwiched between another layer of them, clouds that somehow manage to throw rain at you from every direction. The southern hemisphere hurls its cold breath at you, a breath I swear carried the faint scent of penguin poop drifting up from Antarctica. It hits you so hard that whatever air you keep after climbing, you hold onto it only because exhaling feels like surrender.
I was soaked. My Blaser R8? Soaked. The optic? Drenched. My guide, Oscar Goodman, a tall, lanky Kiwi, looked like he swam there. And the bull tahr? He was soaked, too. Two hundred twenty-five yards away, bedded down in the rain, unfazed, and I'd bet good money he liked it.
I wiped my scope. Then again. And again. The last swipe was pointless. The blur wasn't on the optic lens but on my eyes, flooded from the cold and wind. I slammed my eyelids shut and squeezed out enough water to drown in.
When I opened them, I could finally see. The tahr was clear. The illuminated dot in my Blaser optic burned like a lighthouse through the fog, the rain, and my constant shivering, guiding my eye to where I'd send the shot.
Oscar leaned in, voice low and steady and whispered.
"When he stands up, shoot him."
Tune in to next week's edition of The Hunting Wire to find out what happened next. I've got to turn the dryer back on.