Masterton shooter hits his own 'Everest'

For keen shooter John Blatchford a recent trip to Argentina was like climbing Mount Everest.

Masterton real estate agent Mr Blatchford travelled to the South American country for a 10-day wing shooting trip.

He compared shooting in Argentina to being a mountaineer and climbing Everest.

"Argentina is the wing shooters' Everest," he said.

"International shooters all around the world go there, it is some of the best shooting in the world."

Mr Blatchford said Argentine farmers have a major problem with pests, such as pigeons and doves, that destroy large amounts of their soya bean production, which is a huge source of profit for them.

"Farmers are losing up to 35 per cent of their crops to these pests."

The shooting party consisted of seven men, three of whom were from Wairarapa, and they were separated into three days of mainly dove shooting and one day of pigeon shooting.

"There are no limits to what you can shoot over there. There are hundreds and hundreds of these birds.

"The farmers and people basically classify them as rats with feathers."

Argentina was far superior to New Zealand for shooting, mostly because of the vast number of birds. "There is nothing in New Zealand that could even compare to the amount of birds - we would probably get close to 15,000 birds here a day that would come in range. For me it was a trip of a lifetime."

He said shooting the birds took intense concentration. "You have to identify one of these birds and follow it through to get the one, and because they're going so fast you get one shot and you are very, very lucky if you get another. They're just like little bullets coming at you."

He first began shooting with his father when he was 12 and bought his own shotgun at 18.

It is the difficulty of the sport that interests him. "You're competing against an animate object to see if you can shoot it before it gets away. It's the challenge of it, to try and do better."

Mr Blatchford also enjoys duck and clay shooting and hopes to be able to head back to Argentina in the future.