Day 4 (4/19)
Best weather yet, woke up to blue sky with just some occasional rain clouds. Hiked into a drainage the opposite direction from yesterday, climbed up to a good vantage point to sit and glass for a while with the sun at my back. Glassed for 45 minutes or so and spotted a pair of tahr way up at the head of the drainage crossing a skree slide, looked like two bulls but too far to tell. Watched them for a couple minutes and decided to make a move on them. I figured I could follow the river in the bottom of this drainage almost all the way up to where they were, but it was almost two miles from where I was, so I wasn’t sure where they’d end up by the time I got over there. Started making my way up the river, stopping to glass every once in a while to see if I could see them or other tahr closer by. Lots of tahr trails and sign along the way. Finally made it to the last little corner and started to creep around to glass the face they were on. As I made my way around, I looked up at a little bench on the mountain above me and saw two nice bulls bedded down, I don’t think they had seen me but they were looking my direction so I dropped to my stomach and started to get my pack off to get my rifle. They never moved so I slid my pack in front of me and got lined up for a shot. It was a very awkward position since they were almost straight above me and I was trying to shoot laying down, so it took some flexibility to finally get to a somewhat steady position. I ranged them at 290 yards, dialed my scope in, and lined up on the left bull. I sat for a couple minutes trying to catch my breath from all the hiking, held one deep breath, and took a shot. I never heard a good “thump” and both bulls took off running, I missed! I couldn’t believe it, that distance is usually a chip shot for me, and I practice out to 800 yards to make those shots feel even easier. Anyways, I didn’t dwell on the miss and hustled around the base of the mountain towards the direction they went. I made it to a wide open skree slide and looked up and saw the pair just about to go over the top of the mountain and disappear into the nasty rocks. As quickly as I could, I got my rangefinder out and took a quick range, I was getting 380-420 yards depending where I was hitting. I dialed to 400 and got in position as quickly as I could. I lined up on the one bull I could still see, squeezed off a shot and a second later heard the telltale “thump” of a bullet hitting body. He stumbled around for a second so I sent another one his way, and he started to roll down the mountain. He slid all the way down the skree slide almost to the creek at the bottom, which sure saved me some mountain climbing. I did it! I couldn’t believe it, I sat there on the side of the mountain and broke down in tears, thinking of what it must have been like for my dad hunting over here before I was born, and how much he would’ve loved to hear this story. After a few minutes of just soaking everything in, I walked up to check out my tahr! He was a gorgeous bull, with a long, shaggy, brown mane and crescent shaped horns that tapered and curled back towards his neck. I don’t think he’s the biggest bull on the mountain but he’s certainly not the smallest, and a fine representative of the species, just what I was hoping for. After a few pictures I got ready to peel some meat off and remove the skull, and realized my knife was in the tent. I hiked all the way to the bottom again where my tent was, had a little meal and hiked all the way back to the tahr. It rained the whole time after that, so not only did the missing knife cost me an extra 5 miles of hiking, but I got thoroughly soaked in the process. Back at camp it seemed the tent was holding up well and everything inside was dry, so I stripped off all my wet clothes and laid them out to dry as best as possible, and crawled into my sleeping bag.
