Communing with Nature!

Okay, so if you are anti hunting, or extremely squeamish, there is at least one photo here that could upset you.. so you've been warned!

I'm not particularly keen on getting up really early, but once in awhile I set the alarm for not much after 4am (actually its Ali's alarm, and she wakes me.. sort of!!) and after a good breakfast of porridge, I head over the hill in our trusty little Suzuki 4WD and go way up a farm track to get there before the sun comes up.

Yesterday was one of those days.

The weather was just amazing,,,... no wind, clear sky, and even though I took extra clothing, I never needed it...

By the time I had parked, and got the gear ready, bullets loaded into my trusty ol Winchester 30 30 and small pack on my back, it was almost light enough to see where I was going. Now I have done a lot of walking huge distances to see if I can find a deer or pig, but I prefer, if at all possible to hunt from just about where I park. I don't mind walking for an hour, but shorter is better.

Not far from where I'd parked I came across some dark animal shapes ahead grazing on the side of the track, and as they hadn't seen me, I was all quite excited as they looked to be nice big pigs. Too dark to tell without a scope (the 30-30 doesn't have one) so I carefully got the little binoculars out, and got focussed on them. If it had been any darker, I may not have been able to positively identify them.. which would have meant I'd sit there until the light got better, however, with the 10 power binoculars, I could just make out that much to my disappointment, they were just a couple of black bullocks standing in a ditch, which had given them the right sorta look to be pigs! I could just imagine the farmers being a little titchy if I bowled over one of their beef herd!

So I carefully backed up, and climbed the hill above them as I didn't really want them to rush off in front of me making all sorts of noise and frightening the pigs I was hoping to see.

Well that was the plan! the crazy animals had some mates up the hill, who did see me and took off like out of control bulldozers through the scrub! closely followed by about a dozen more! bugger! talk about wrecking the peace and quiet!!!

OK.. plan B.. actually I didn't really have one.. so I waited about 5 minutes until the crashing had diminished into the distance, and headed slowly up the hill where I was relieved to see the herd had taken a different track, leaving me alone again to quietly thread my way through the scrub towards a clearing where I hoped a few pigs would be getting a feed in, before the sun came up, and they all went bush to get a bit of sleep.

Just so you don't get the wrong picture,, this clearing is only about 1km from where the Suzuki was, so even though it may sound like I was going a long way.. I wasn't, it's just that I did it slowly.. cos I need to be quiet and hear whats happening around me.. pigs can make a lot of noise when they are feeding, so it is handy hear them before they know you are there.

Didn't hear anything.. other than the bloody cows!!! so I didn't really expect to see anything either, .. and actually the deer was looking at me when I saw it.. darn.. and it was still not very light, so I thought I was looking at a dark coloured goat, looking at me... about 60 metres away.. this thought lasted about 3 seconds, and then I realised.. "shit.. a deer!!!!" and about a second later I had shattered the quiet .. or at least the Winchester did... unlucky for the deer, lucky for us.. as this meat is really excellent!

So the long (!!!not really) walk back to the car was a little tedious, as my recently empty pack now weighed a little over 45lbs..

At this stage it was only about 9am, and far too nice a day to head home so back at the Suzuki, I made a coffee, dumped the meat into a bin, changed rifles to a little BRNO .22 Hornet, and headed off to see if I could find a hare or two.. This rifle is very accurate, and has a twin trigger system, with an extremely fine hair trigger setup. and a scope.. so as long as they aren't moving, they are in big trouble! as was a goat that I came across!!!! the BRNO dropped it very cleanly, and so now I had some excellent meat for our French friends who make a really mean Morrocon goat curry... once that was in the pack, the sun was really warming up, so not much point looking for hares, .. they're all sleeping in some very hard to see spot.. except that one over there!!! and it wasn't moving... felt a little mean, as it actually may have been asleep.. anyway... even if it wasn't, I doubt it would have heard the shot. .. so,....quite a morning.. and only 3 shots! thats how we like it.. especially as the last time I stalked up to a pig (and it was a good sized one) I missed it from about 20 metres, and it didn't even know I was there!!! next time!