TAHR TIPS

I’m certainly no tahr hunting expert. Although I have hunted tahr a lot for a guy so young. I’d pale in comparison to more than a few people I know of. These five tips are simply habits I’ve noticed, especially recently, as I tried to shoot a mature bull with a traditional recurve. When your stalking maybe four animals a day to within 20 yards. You pick up a few things. Much more so than hunting with a rifle I’d say. Trial and error is a beautiful way to learn, and I have certainly made a lot of errors.

Wind

The wind could best be described as sometimes an asshole, sometimes your best friend. Obviously, wind is a hunters worst enemy. It makes glassing hard, whips your pack straps straight into your face at lethal velocity and worst of all. Blows your quarry out of its bed or changes midway through a ‘sure thing’ stalk. There’s no need to convince you the pure hatred that can be felt for the wind by hunters. On this most recent trip down south Filming season 1 of STRIDER however I came to rely on the wind quite often. I shot my very first large game animal, a nanny Tahr with a recurve midway through this trip. It was a very strong wind that pushed me off the pinnacles and down into the valley. At the time I was annoyed I wasn’t able to continue on the ridge but it turned into a good situation. When I spotted a mob of nannies below me, I realised the wind was going to play to my advantage. Wind is a noise maker. Being heard certainly isn’t the number one thing that’s going to stuff you up or even the second but it is important. I missed out on a very large bull tahr later on for this very reason, had I just waited till the heat of the day created a steady gust 30mins later, I wouldn’t have had him hear my heart beating from 20 meters away just before I could make an ethical shot. A steady breeze is the best you can look for. It doesn’t take a lot to mask the sounds you make. Early in the morning and late in the evening the wind either hasn’t ramped up yet or has died off. Too gusty and it might blow your bullet or arrow off target. Too light and you might get busted right at the critical point. A steady breeze is ideal. It need not blow straight towards you though this is preferable, a strong crosswind can be just as useful.

Grazing

It sounds obvious. just get the wind right. But tahr and really all game ungulates are very good at moving in such a way to make it difficult for you. Most Ungulates will graze into wind the majority of the time. There are a number of different theories as to why. It enables grass to be blown into their mouth more easily, it involves plant warning pheromones not being able to reach plants in the grazing path of the animal, and my personal theory, that it just makes them hard to hunt. Taking Himalayan tahr instance, snow leopards (their major predator) would find a harder time sneaking up on Tahr if they constantly graze and move into the wind. An approaching predator, stalking through the grass would have to move faster than the tahr themselves. If the tahr grazes with the wind. A snow leopard could easily lie in wait for its prey to come towards it with the assurance that the tahr would not get it’s sent. This is a thing that basically applies to all game animals. Hunting with a recurve found me stalking through the long tussock many times. Planning a stalk was constantly difficult because of the way the tahr were moving. The right approach wind wise was never a good way to get close enough for a shot. This isn’t a given rule, Animals will do whatever they want sometimes. This is more a justification for waiting for the right opportunity. I like to hunt quite aggressively. I see any opportunity, I take it. Every situation has a best way to attack. But sometimes that best way is still a very low percentage chance of success. With a rifle you often don’t have this problem. But bow hunting forces you to slow down and really pick your battles. Eventually that mob of tahr is going to stuff up. Or maybe you know the wind is going to change when the sun hits a certain face, and leave the tahr more vulnerable. Tahr feed and move in ways to make it difficult for you as a predator. All you have to do is be patient and pick the right time.

Tussock bulls

When I first started hunting tahr I was constantly looking into bluffs and rocky areas to find them, of course this worked but I very quickly learned that tahr can be found almost anywhere. Unlike in the Himalayas tahr don’t have to worry about animals like wolves and bears, so the prospect of nutritious feed, far away from bluff systems is too attractive for them to resist. You can waste your time glassing cliffs when you should be looking down in the valley floor amongst the matagauri. I often find old lone bulls in these areas. This makes it potentially easier to plan stalks. As you are already above them, and everyone knows tahr rarely look up for potential threats. Don’t think it to be too easy. I’ve bumped plenty of Bulls completely hidden in tussock. If you can see anything at all, it’ll be their horns, barely poking out the grass. Matagauri faces are another favourite of bulls, they can pop out, giant black beasts, looking like a huge grizzly bear. Then they’ll be gone, enveloped by waste high scrub and completely invisible once more. Areas out of the wind seems to be attractive, water in the summer months is definitely important. But ultimately the hardest thing about these bulls is that their time wasters. You’ll end up looking at tussock faces for many hours trying to pick out these individuals. Knowing you should be targeting better areas. Then, once you’ve finally given up on that plan you’ll spook a mob of bulls from 15 yards, and wonder how the hell you didn’t see them.

Old nannies

Beware the old nannies. It’s one of those things you don’t think about, your so busy thinking about that old wise bull you forget about that ancient nanny. Outside of the rut nannies seem like the ones calling the shots. Where to bed, where to feed. The bulls, if they’re not mobbed up separately are just there for the ride. I’ve shot quite a few nannies that-looking at the annuli on their horns- were over 9 years old. Most Tahr hunters aren’t looking for old nannies to shoot and in all the time I’ve been a tahr hunter, more than half the animals I’ve seen have been bulls. I’m sure plenty of people would disagree with this, and there are definitely some very wise old bulls out there. But the average bull is a lot dumber than the average nanny. A lot of nannies I’ve seen are just so tuned into their surroundings, they’re not necessarily the ‘bolt as soon as they see you type of animals.’ They’ll just keep tabs on you from a distance, they’ll bed in areas that are just impossible to stalk or they’ll scan the surrounding hills constantly. They’ve seen a lot of other tahr die and don’t want the same fate. When you’re after a bull, your biggest enemy is that matriarch. Rifle hunting is relatively easy. But It’s really bloody hard to get within bow range of a mob of tahr with one of these wise nannies acting as lookout.

I wouldn’t call Tahr hunting challenging because of the nature of tahr, the fact is the vast majority don’t receive a lot of hunting pressure from ground hunters. This can make them quite easy to hunt with a rifle outside of the challenging winter period when climatic conditions make the terrain much more dangerous. It’s part of the reason I decided the hunt them with a recurve bow, it seemed like a manageable challenge. It proved to be both much easier and impossibly harder than I expected. From my experiences I’ve drawn that importance of picking your battles, your sometimes far better off waiting then going, as a hunting idol of mine says, do it the right way, not the easy way. I really took that to heart and is some of the best advice you can repeat for a hunter. Almost every time I’ve ever messed up, is because I was cutting or corner or picking and easy option. Bowhunting tahr is a challenge, but my god is it fun. When you’re crawling on your belly to get close to a mob of tahr you really feel like a hunter, just like a snow leopard in the grass. That’s the only way I can describe it, as primal, raw and personal as hunting can get. If you don’t already, consider picking up a bow, but regardless I hope these tips help.