Our Hunting Trip to New Zealand

I’m finally taking a few minutes to write up a few notes on our trip to New Zealand.  My youngest daughter, Kirsten (11 years of age) hunted with me and then Inga (19 years of age) joined us for the last week.  We spent the first 10 days on the south island, which is absolutely spectacular.  We then spent a week on the north island, which is different, but also beautiful.  My intent was to hunt a Himalayan Tahr, a Chamois and a Fallow deer. Kirsten was going to hunt a red stag, a Arapawa ram (sheep) and a Taggenburg goat.  The hunt was supposed to be 7 days, but it took us 9 days to get our animals because of bad weather.  Because of the bad weather I could not hunt Chamois, which live in the nose bleed country. I ended up taking a red stag instead.  We did not get a chance to fish.

On day 3 Kirsten missed a shot of about 250 yards on a big 16-17 point stag. She was heartbroken, but after telling her about a few of the shots I’ve missed she got over it.  On day 4 I took a Wallaby. No it’s not a kangaroo, but it is a cousin.  I think there are very few persons who have this trophy and I’m having a whole body mount done of him to honor his passing.  On day 5 I took my Tahr.  You can see from the picture that we had snow there. These animals love extreme country and it was.  The shot was 278 yards on a walking animal.  We jumped the herd off a ridge as we were trying to sneak on them.  They went down into a draw and then up the other side.  I took him as he was peaking the small ridge.  It was an exciting moment and you can see from the Tahr that his mane was in full form. He should look great next to my mountain goat.

On day 6 Kirsten took her stag.  We were running out of days or we’d have waited for a bigger one. We thought it was a 14 point, but it was missing a bray tine.  The stalk took over an hour because of hinds and smaller stags. We finally got within 120 yards. She missed the first shot and then got him on #2.  I got it all on video and it was very exciting.  Later that day she took her sheep on one of the most fun run and gun hunts I’ve ever been on. She was smiling from ear to ear and made the first shot at about 250 yards after a run.  She hit him, but needed one more shot to finish him.  The last shot was much closer after another long (couple hundred yards) run. 

As I said because of bad weather we couldn’t get up in the mountains to hunt Chamois.  We’d spotted a couple at different times, but they were way up in the mountains and you need at least a ½ day to get up there and down. My PH likes to hunt them on foot.  Many locations use helicopters to find Tahr and Chamois. He’s old school and believes in fair chase.  We got along just fine since I love challenges and spot and stalk hunting.  When we had nice weather we couldn’t find them or were hunting other animals.  When we found them we were short on time.   I opted to take a stag on day 8 because of the bad weather and the minimal amount of time we had left.  It turned out to be a stag that Kirsten could not get a shot on from day 2.  You can see that I did okay, but I really wanted a Chamois. I made the shot at 348 yards.  I was so excited that I turned the scope down to 2 power versus up to 7.  I get buck fever real bad, but that’s a first.  I couldn’t figure out why he looked so small until after the shot. Thankfully I knew the ballistics and knew how much to hold over him.

On day 9 Kirsten took her goat. He’s not a big one, but the Taggenburg goats are small anyway.  Kirsten thought he looked cool regardless of size.  I also took my Fallow deer on day 9 at 170 yards.  We’d seen this deer the previous day, but passed on him. Fallow deer are really hard to judge and I’ve never dealt with them so I didn’t know a good one from a bad one, but the PH was even confused so we passed a few times before we committed.  We didn’t realize how tall he was and this threw everything out of proportion.  On the last evening of day 9 I opted to take him.  He turned out to be 28 inches tall and had more points than we thought. He scores about 215, which is really big (gold medal). Then the white color phase is rare so he’ll be a great trophy if I can find room on my walls. 

The people in NZ are great and I’d highly recommend the country to anyone who has any interest in going there.  The highlight of the trip for me was watching Kirsten hunt. She suffered big time in the extreme terrain, but she never gave up.  The smiles on her face after each animal were worth all the money I spent and then some.  She wanted everything mounted so she’ll be starting her own trophy room.   I’ve created a monster.

Keith Kellogg

Note:  You may see full size images of their trophies in the New Zealand Photo gallery