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GOAT AND SHEEP HUNTING IN IRELAND

I have always heard that as you are dying, your life races before your eyes and with that thought in mind, I decided that my final showing would be exciting and of high adventure. I have always lived my life from one adventure to another.
—DIAL DUNKIN

As usual, I start at the back of new magazines and slowly thumb through the ads looking for good deals on hunts. When I saw Dennis Campbell and the big goat, I thought it was some kind of Ibex. I couldn't get to the phone and call David Moore at Celtic Field Sports fast enough to get the details and find out about the critter in the picture with Dennis. Well, here's the story: the animal is a Bilberry goat and is only found in Ireland. It is believed to be related to the Pashmina, Maltese or Cashmere goats and most likely came with the Huguenots from France 400 years ago. They are definitely a species of their own and considered feral and a nuisance to sheepherders. Nevertheless, they are an outstanding trophy with enormous horns and a beautiful shaggy coat and as I mentioned above, can only be found in Ireland.

After a few minutes of conversation with Dave, I booked the hunt and told him to give me a day to check with my hunting partner, Don Jacklin, who would most likely join me on the hunt. I first met Don and shared a hunt with him on the Kamchatka peninsula in the Russian Far East. Since then, we have been on a number of hunts together. Don is a couple years younger than I am and I always like to have him along to look after me. I immediately got him on the phone and told him about the hunt and suddenly things slowed down a bit. Don explained that he was getting ready for surgery on a damaged ligament in his shoulder, brought on by a golfing accident. I reminded him that I had always said golf was a dangerous sport. After consulting with his Doctor, it was decided that he would be able to go afield on a mountain hunt the later part of October. David Moore said that it would be a good time to go because it was the end of rutting season and the beginning of cooler temperatures. He didn't mention that it was also Ireland’s "drippy” season.

The dates for the hunt were set back to the later part of October and we departed on the 20th (2011). I arrived in Dublin one hour ahead of Don and learned that the papers for my gun were not going to be available until four days later, on Monday. We were met at the airport by Dave’s sister, Bernadette, who drove us to her brother’s very nice lodge, Broomfield, about an hour's drive from the airport. From the very beginning, Don had elected to use the lodge’s gun and the next day collected two sheep. I preferred to wait until the papers for my gun were available, so my wife and I checked out all the local antique stores. My refusal to use their gun and my reply to their continued suggestion to do so was that it would be like going to a dance with your best and prettiest girl and then not dancing with her. My rifle and scope that I have worked on and lived with for so long is a part of me, and I am not going hunting without it and that's that! The Bilberry goats that were the main target and reason for the hunt are located four hours to the northwest of David's lodge, near Killarney. With the delay of getting the permit, we decided to return to Dublin for the weekend and spent Saturday and Sunday hunting through more antique stores. Don and his wife, Dorothy, like antique shopping as much as Esperanza and I do, so it was time well spent. On Monday morning, one of David's men arrived with the gun papers. It was our intention to pick up my gun from the airport police station where it was being held and head straight to the goat hunting area. Retrieving the gun was no problem...until we drove out of the airport right into the middle of Ireland’s worst flood in 100 years. A few miles out of town we were stuck bumper-to-bumper and our car died right in the middle of the highway. Now, that part of the trip gets a little damp. Ireland’s worst flood in a hundred years and we spent four hours on the side of the road waiting to be rescued. Fortunately, the filling station where we landed had WiFi and food. Because of the long delay, we elected to stay at Broomfield and depart early the next morning.

During the night, Don decided to collect another sheep and did so the next morning. Our departure was delayed a few hours so we arrived at our next destination, Kenmare, a few miles from Killarney, the headquarters for the goat hunt, later in the afternoon. There we met up with our guide, Davey, and his hunting guide partner, Patrick, and settled into a very comfortable B&B that Davey and his wife, Carmen, owned. It was decided to check my gun to make sure the possible rough treatment of the case had not jarred the scope and the necessity to re-sight it. I knew that nothing was wrong with the scope, having traveled around the world a number of times with it secured in the best gun case made, Tuffy. In all the years I have traveled with my gun securely fitted in the Tuffy case, I have never had to re-sight my scope. I have always thought that sighting-in was just a ruse by the guide to see how well the hunter can shoot.

I agreed to the outing just because there wasn't anything else to do for the rest of the evening other than to have a rum and coke and eat a few Fritos. As I knew the scope was fine, proven with a dead-center shot at 100-yards. As we drove back toward the lodge and the rum and coke, Davey said that he knew a field where a group of Sitka deer hung out and suggested that some fresh deer meat would be nice. A short drive down a “ribbon road”—the name I dubbed the two strips of concrete with grass in between that are laced all over the country—ended on a knoll above a beautiful pumpkin-colored field. There was just enough light to see the dark form of a dozen or so deer that were up to their bellies in the pastel-colored grass. We hurriedly positioned ourselves on the knoll that was topped with a smooth tabletop rock and nothing to shoot from, so I just sat down on the tabletop rock and with my Leica Geovid binoculars, zeroed in on the largest animal in the herd. I activated the range finder and got a 368-yard reading. Just for the sake of it, I pulled from by belt holster my newest gadget, the new Leupold RX-1000/TBR rangefinder; it read 367-yards, close enough. I turned the dial of the scope elevation turret to 350 plus one click. With the gun on my knee I found the deer but was having a little problem holding steady enough to feel comfortable with the shot. I asked Davey to stand behind me with his leg pressed against my back. That pressure steadied my sitting position and I was able to hold the crosshairs right on the deer's shoulder. The 200GR Nosler Accubond bullet that Larry at Superior Ammunition loads specially for my gun did its job.

We spent the next couple days driving on the “ribbon roads” over, around and through mountains every bit as rough and rugged as any I had hunted in the Far East— not as high but just as rough, if not rougher. The weather was against us and we finally ran out of time. Don had some important meetings coming up and had to honor his departure on the 28th, so off we went, back to Dublin where we had left the girls with credit cards. As we drove out of town, I called my office and had my secretary check to see if I could get another return date so I could have a couple more days of hunting. She was back to me in less than five minutes. I called back to Davey and told him to head towards us and pick up my gun case…no use hauling it back to Dublin. With that out of the way, we came up with a new plan to return to the hunt aboard a train from Dublin to Killarney, which sounded like a great idea. We got Don and Dorothy off the next morning and then Esperanza and I caught the 9 a.m. train. It was her first train ride and we both got a kick out of it.

High above the valley, we were scoping the pasture below when Patrick said “Bingo!” There he was, the Bilberry goat that we had been looking for, with a small band of his friends and the horns were big. There were two large, very rocky hills both over 2,000 feet high sticking up from the valley floor. One was barren and the other partly covered with trees and sheer rock facings. We decided that the goats would probably head for the hill with the trees, so it was decided that Patrick would walk from our present position down into the valley and work his way up the hill without the trees and try to watch where the goats would head. The landowner instructed us on how to get down into the valley and around to the other side. He was going to stay on the high ground and assist Patrick in keeping up with the goats’ movement. I had brought four Motorola radios for just such an occasion. Dave and I drove the car a mile or so further into the canyon then down a rather steep embankment, still on the “ribbon road.” On the other side of the canyon, we parked and hurriedly walked back towards the action. We hadn't gone more than 100-yards when we ran into an eight-foot high hog wire fence. There was no way to get under it. Well, no bother for me as I had spent my youth not in pool halls but climbing over similar fences on the south end of the famous King Ranch. I am sure that the statute of limitations has run its course since those great days when I spent in my youth poaching on the famous ranch that many hunters never returned from, as the old timers tell the stories. At 76, I handled that fence pretty good and heard Dave telling others the next day how I scaled it.

Through a dense grove of trees and over a creek we are now facing both hills and a sea of grass that covered the floor of the valley for a half-mile. We located Patrick on a rock ledge high on the hill, his binoculars glued to his face. A brief radio message let him know where we were. He located us and waved and said, “Come on, I know where he is.” Now the hard part of the hunt was just about to begin. The relatively level, pretty green field of grass was an unforeseen booby trap. The grass was waist-high and setting in a bog, if your foot slips off the root system of the grass, your boot sinks into six-inches of glue-like mud and is damn hard to pull out. I was not prepared for this delightful walk and it took quite a while to reach the hill. Finally I was sitting on the rock ledge beside Patrick. He immediately began instructing me on the location of the goat that was hiding in a patch of thick brush on a ledge straight across on the other hill from where we were sitting. The opening was the size of a large washtub and I could make out the white side of its shaggy coat and the black stripe running from his leg up over his back. The horns were not visible, so I took the word of my trusted guide that this was the same one we had seen from the road and set up for the shot.

My newest range finder, the Leupold RX-1000/TBR, was having difficulty zeroing in on the target because of a light, intermittent rain. The wind would pick up and cause vertical streaks made by the rain to angle out as much as 20-degrees. The streaks would stop for a minute or so then start up again, followed by an increase in the wind and the angling of the streaks. I finally got a good reading and set the elevation turret at 350. The boulder I was behind wasn't high enough for me to rest the gun on and elevate in a straight line to the target. I was shuffling around trying to get a solid, elevated rest for the gun by placing it on my back pack but it still wasn't high enough. Then Davey came to the rescue with a four-inch-thick slab of moss he had pulled from another rock. This on the boulder and my Eberiestock backpack on top of the moss and now I was right on the money with a straight aiming-plane, dead on the target. I adjusted the perplex turret and sharpened the target image. I was right on him and saw for the first time the tip end of his horn as he moved his head. I was all set and watching the streaks made by the rain. They were slowing down to a straight, vertical descent. I took a deep breath, let out part of it and thought to myself, as I always do, before pulling the trigger, “This one’s for you, Buford,” the gentleman that took me in when I was in high school that taught me to shoot and coached me through winning the Texas State Junior Smallbore Championship. I didn't have to look and see if I got him. When the firing pin hit the cap, the crosshairs were dead-on the spot I was aiming at and I knew it was my 17th one- shot kill. Both guides were slapping me on the back and offering their congratulations. It took them an hour to climb the hill and retrieve the trophy. The 200GR Nosler Accubond had once again done its job.

Back at the lodge, Davey got a call from a local landowner about a sheep that had killed one of his prize breeding rams and invited us to hunt and get rid of it for him. It turned out to be what is called the Connemara Blackface, descendants of the Central Asia Argali. They are feral and because of interbreeding with domestic sheep, are actually considered vermin. We set out and found him. The next morning, we collected another sheep, the Stone sheep, which has recently been approved as a species toward the Grand Slam Award. This particular sheep had a double horn on one side, caused from an injury to the head. All in all, it was a nice, inexpensive hunt—and you can even take your golf clubs and wife along!

SIDEBAR
My gun is a 300 Remington Ultra Magnum RUM on a Remington 700 action with a custom Hart stainless steel barrel with a 1:10 twist built by David Lauck of D & L Sports™, Inc. David was just named American Pistolsmith of the Year for 2012 by the American Pistolsmiths Guild. A few years ago, he won the first Excellence in Craft Award by the American Gunsmithing Association. The scope is a Leupold Mark 4, 4.5-14-40mmLR/Target with Warne scope mounts. The mounts are just a little too high and the comb on the stock just didn't get my face high enough to see straight into the scope, so I added a Beartooth Comb Raiser that now allows me to shoot without raising my face to look straight into the scope. The Leopold scope with the custom elevation turret was calibrated and engraved with the yardage settings out to 500-yards, with computer- originated settings using the ballistic coefficient information provided by Superior Ammunition, but they weren't close to being accurate. So, I wrapped a neatly cut quarter-inch band of tape and installed it on the turret over the engraved yardage settings. Then, using my new Kenco Outdoors tripod that I have replaced my conventional portable shooting bench with (the Kenco is a lot easier to carry around), I sighted in the gun at 100- to 500-yards and marked the tape in place of the factory-engraved settings with the accurate aiming points that I had personally made. The marks were made with a fine-tip ballpoint pen, and then covered with a coat of clear nailpolish to keep the marks from being smudged or wiped-off. I just don't believe in computer developed ballistic settings, and with 17 one-shot kills, I feel quite comfortable with my system.