I hope the tahr ballot block weather worked more in your favour than it did in ours.

We had Speculation Creek the 3rd week in May and it was a complete washout, no-one was able to get in. Oh well, back to walking in when the weather is more suitable, which is more our style anyway. We’ve had some great success off camera since then, doing shorter trips driving in up the East Coast rivers, thinking we won’t film this as we probably won’t find anything very mature. Murphy’s law of course and we managed to find the Garmin guys (one of one of our sponsors and true good barstards in the NZ outdoor industry) a cracker bull up an often forgotten headwater. Look out for that story in a future issue.

There’s much to be done politically in the next little while, with the second tranche of firearms legislation not far off being released, and the tahr management plan for next year about to be formulated. While the initial changes to the firearms legislation (being pragmatic) have been probably as good as we could have expected in the circumstances. No, none of us are happy about having legitimate firearms confiscated and being made by some in the media to look like villains by association with some nutcase from Australia - who never should have got a firearms licence in the first place. This next set of proposed changes could be quite different. We will have to be very vigilant we don’t get dealt an unwieldy, very expensive and impossible-to-be-done-properly firearms registration system. Judging by overseas experience that will be an even further case of pointless laws for the lawful.

Tahr control operations have been in progress since the start of July and so far DOC, AATH offsets and one of the contracts for culling let by DoC have been undertaken. As you’ll read in the GAC update, we have been checking up on one of the DoC culls to ensure the operators doing the culling are sticking to the agreed procedure. We’ll keep you posted on the outcome of this. DoC must have the system to record and include the recreational hunters tallies up and running before the spring hunting season when so many are out and about tahr hunting – a time of year that is just as important in recreational hunter effort as the rut.

DoC is currently having meetings with a number of individuals and groups prior to a control plan for next year being formulated. We are concerned about this approach and sincerely hope this is not a case of the old divide and conquer strategy of the past. The reason a consensus was reached on a workable tahr operational plan for this past year was due to the collective workings through the Tahr Liaison Group, with leading input from the GAC. I really do worry about what DoC will come up with if they go back to dreaming up plans behind closed doors as they have in the past. That is what caused the whole tahr debacle last year in the first place. Watch this space and be ready for action if we need it.

The spot the logo winners are Trish Breen and Kyle Hagen.The logos were on page 14 in the Hardy Engineering advert and on page 85 in the Tuff Gear advert.

Remember the Sika Show is on in Taupo on the 28th and 29th of September. We’ll be floating round somewhere, so we’ll see you there!.

In this issue:

• An alpine double, double – Red stag and bull tahr for Emil Hansen and Luke Care
• Ryan Hart’s 10” chamois buck
• A brute of a highcountry stag by Toby Walker
• Brent Glentworth in South Africas Eastern cape – Part I
• Tom Cliffe’s first roar hunt – a 17 point stag!
• Hunting with a lens – chasing Sambar with Pete Harding
• Johnny Bissell talks Indicating Dogs – Part II
• Backridge Butcher Breaks Down Shoulders
• Discussing a Big Game license - PointsSouth
• The Night Sky and the Pheasant with Matt Winter
• A new series – Is it Safe to Eat? By Corey Carston
• Cardio Conditioning with Michael McCormack
• The Robinson Huts, the latest from Permolat

Test Fires:

• Ruger Precision Long Range Target Rifle in 300 win mag.
• Nightforce ATACR 7-35x56 scope
• The Jetboil Summit Skillet
• Klymit’s Double V sleeping mat