Birthday Billys - John Bates - 2009
Well Sunday had Mozza, Birthday boy Danny, Marty and myself off chasing goats. We hadn't been out after goats for a while due to the fallow and Red rut, but Sunday was Dannys birthday and there is nothing better than punishing yourself and mates up and down mountains to know your still alive even if a little older.
One of the things I like about goats hunting is the very social hours, we were up and away at 6AM (much better than the 4AM when deer hunting), we arrived at the property and the weather was starting to clear up so Mozza and myself, Dan and Marty wished each other luck and we parted for the day. Moz and myself headed for a high ridge in the 4X4 and after a short walk we started to glass and spotted a few goats deep in the valley and high on the opporsite slope. We smelled the musty stench of billy wafting from directly below, after a little more glassing we spied a few on a rock outcrop a couple 100 metres away. We now had a plan for the day, we would hunt the steepest terrain on the property.
In no time at all we had gone back to the car and kitted up for the day and Moz was coming to draw on a nice young eater that was happliy standing in a small tree browsing, with the video rolling moz hit him fair in the boiler room and down the billy went.
Moz with the first eater of the day.
While we were butchering that billy two more turned up above us and made the mistake of hanging around two long on top of a rocky high perch and my arrow found it's mark from 50 mts.
As the day progessed we had quite a few stalks and some great footage and took a couple more young ones for meat, by lunch time we were questioning taking so much meat early in the day in this type of terrain as our packs were letting us know about their weight.
That afternoon we found a nice curly horned billy and I took him from 40mts after a lenthy stalk avoiding the 10 or so other goats eyes. He was a bit smaller than I estimated but a nice looking billy all the same.
I hit this guy well and we followed a huge blood trail expecting to find him within metres, but this guy covered some ground the whole time bleeding so hard that we didn't even have to look down to follow the trail, after a good klm up and down the steep gully I finished him off.
We were thinking about making the trek back up and out when we spotted a very nice Billy for this area moving off up the creek with a mob of nannies. A quick stalk and a missed shot they started to move out of the creek in the the high scrub. He paused to nudge another goat at 40 mts and I took him perfectly ending the hunt in a matter of seconds. Moz managed to get some great footage of this guy making it even better.
Batesy's 105 Douglas points billy goat
On arival back at the meeting point Dan and Marty informed us that they had checked out a steep and thick creek gully that we had talked about checking out for a while, they did it very tough only seening a few goats but had a great day all the same with marty taking a very good billy scoring 109 2/8DP. `
An excellent way to spend a day with your mates even though my legs are still burning while I'm sitting here writing this.
