New Zealand Outdoors Community

Well what a good unplanned day. We were heading up to the farm today with a few rifles to do some target shooting and try out a mates 308 with some different types of ammo he bought for it. Its been pretty wet down here and once we got to the farm we found out it was to wet to get the little suzuki out to where we set up without chopping the races up to much so it was time for a plan b. We decided to park wagon up and grab a rifle each and go for a walk instead and see if we could see any goats, we have been culling them on this farm for a while now. Wife decided to take the krico 22 hornet and I took the 6.5 grendel got a pack some water meat bags knives bipods and range finder. Wife also took a tripod so she could get some footage for her internet/social media page she has and off we went. Its not a bad sized farm and after a slippery steep climb we got up onto a ridge that we walk along to see a lot of the farm. At the top we sat down for a bit of a rest and figure out which way we were going to go. After sitting there for a bit I noticed a goat over on the other side of the valley and pointed it out to my wife, then another appeared then another until we counted 13. Ok time for a plan, we decided to follow the ridge along and it joins up with another one which we would go along and that would take us above where the mob was, it would also take us past another couple of places where we usually see goats as well off we went. We got to where a couple of ridges join and sat there for a bit and after a bit spotted another mob of 10 along another ridge. we decided to keep heading to the first mob we saw and have a look at them, finally got there and set our rifles up and had a look over them. Wife saw a billy with a pretty good set of horns and wanted him. I saw a black one that wasn't to bad either so Id take that one. Got ready and waited or her to take first shot boom down her one went they took off and ran along the ridge a bit then stopped boom down went mine. Waited for a bit made sure we had all our gear and then went over and had a look at them and took back legs and back steaks. time to head back to the car. On the way back we saw 4 goats along the other ridge where we saw the other mob one was in a steep crappy bit ranged it at 256m and decided to have a shot. Lined the grendel up using the second hold over dot on the reticle and let one go wow down that one went as well but ended up in a steep gully you would of needed abseiling gear to get to so we had to leave that one there. So that was a cool day not really hunting but as good as it gets around Auckland and goats are pretty easy but a good animal to start on. Ill do a brief scope comparison in the optics section

It depends where you are going after them. If your on doc land minimum is  222. On private land where we go I have used 22rf up to my 6.5 06. It depends on the terrain as well back in my younger days a lot of us used to use 22magnum in bush and closer stuff. When I was culling on harvested pine blocks I was usually using my 222 and once they started getting a bit more spooky I used a 6.5 x55. The 22 hornet works well on them as well and is probably cheaper to run than a 22 magnum. You can usually get pretty close to them so a bow would be ok as well if you can use one well.

more around puhoi