This hunt saw some of Swazi’s very own crew take on New Zealand’s South Island West Coast. With a lot of guidance from Swazi’s South Island man on the ground — Sam Bell — an avid hunter and Mackenzie Country sheep farmer- the team spent three nights and four days on the adventure of a lifetime.
Not his first time in New Zealand, and flying in from Sweden for the occasion was Christer — Swazi’s Scandinavian rep. Christer’s hunted tahr before and will tell you without hesitation that it’s the finest meat in the world. Visiting New Zealand for the first time was Christer’s mate Peter — he’d never shot a chamois or tahr in his life. Flying down from Auckland was Simon, who is occasionally allowed out of the office and into the wild — but spends most of his time running Swazi.
Some hunts go exactly as planned. Most don’t. Either way, they’re worth telling. This is the first in a series of stories from the Swazi Clan — out in the wild, doing what they love.
Sam drove up to Christchurch from the Mackenzie at 4 a.m. to collect everyone from the airport. They drove west through Arthur’s Pass, stopped in Hokitika for supplies, and pushed on until the road ran out. A helicopter took them the rest of the way and dropped them on a flat piece of ground high in the hills.
That evening, the mountain wasn’t giving much away. Fog rolled in and out; visibility came and went. They clocked a couple of chamois, but nothing worth moving on.
Camp was set, food was sorted, and they called it early. Some evenings are just reconnaissance.
The next morning, they pushed deeper in — uphill, then a long walk down to a tarn tucked into the hills. They set up camp for the night and settled in.
The sky started to clear. Cold air, good light. They split into pairs — Sam with Simon, Christer with Peter — and got moving.
Sam and Simon worked west, glassing as they went. They tried several different vantage points across the morning, saw animals, but none of them was right. Then they disturbed a chamois — it spooked and bolted a couple of valleys over.
They moved fast, covering a few hundred metres around the face of the mountain, got into position and set up. Simon put the shot away clean. His first-ever chamois — a solid nine-inch buck. They packed out the backstraps and the head and headed back to find the others.
Christer and Peter had been busy. Christer had stalked down a steep face, got to 280 metres on a big bull tahr, and made it count. Later in the day, Sam spotted a 10.5-year-old bull tahr at 380 metres and took it.
That left Peter.
He got his chamois on a ridge — his first ever. The animal dropped far downhill and retrieving it was hard work. But they got there.
By then, the weather had other ideas. Rain came in, the fog thickened, and the walk out to the hut turned into a proper grind — dark, wet, and longer than anyone would have chosen. Navigation was tough. They didn’t reach the hut until just before midnight.
Nobody made a fuss. They got in, got dry, and got warm.
The helicopter came back the next morning. It lifted them out over the West Coast — glaciers, mountains, bush stretching out below — and returned them to Franz Josef. A good way to end it.
Four people, four animals. Simon’s first chamois. Christer’s tahr, which he’d been thinking about since the last time he was here, tahr tartare and carpaccio say he wasn’t disappointed. Check out the dishes below. Sam’s bull, taken at range in good country. And Peter — 55 years old, first trip to New Zealand, first chamois on a ridge in the Southern Alps.
“It’s never too late,” he said afterwards.
He wasn’t wrong.
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