Be king of the kit you’ve got

“Put her on half-cock,

Will.” I eased the bolt handle upwards, the gloom of darkness sinking into the alpine crevasse as each second of silence passed. We moved stealthily forwards, through the chest-high tussock grass, willing every sense to pick up the tahr bull — he had to be within feet of us. I heard him first, closing the bolt and shouldering rifle in one movement. He stopped and filled my sights only a few paces away.

This was the moment I had travelled halfway round the globe for and then... click. He was gone, like a ghost into the gloom. I learned something new that day; my custom action doesn’t do half-cock. As luck would have it, that missed opportunity led, a few days later, to a monster tahr, high on an alpine ridge, unguided, on public