WINTER CHAMOIS

It's always an exciting adventure but this time there was a special level of anticipation. Accompanying me to hunt the elusive chamois was Tim, my right-hand man, and Matt, my brother, who was on his first trip.

We had been into this wider area almost a dozen times previously and had been lucky enough to have taken both tahr and chamois on most of them. This time we had decided on a spot on a terrace just above a river, focusing our attention on chamois. On previous trips we had gone in on foot, but now that we knew chamois were always about, dropping in amongst them would put us in close. Well, so we hoped. The West Coast weather that morning wasn’t as we had hoped for, with howling winds that delayed our fly-in for a day; disappointing, but out of our control. We found accommodation and chilled out for the day, knowing an improvement was forecast and set to stay that