Clemo
20-01-08, 11:22 AM
The alarm barked in protest as I fumble for the snooze button, I lay there thinking why the hell is that alarm going off at 3:30am on a Thursday for! Slowly as the fog of sleep gave way to contiouse thought I realised, I’m not working today, IM GOING HUNTING!
I spring out of bed and quickly prepare breakfast for myself and my 6 year old son Tim; I grab the remainder of our gear and jam it into the already loaded truck. When I come back inside, I find Tim already awake, dressed in full camo, stuffing his face with cereal and at the same time grinning like a Cheshire cat. He can’t hide his excitement as we are about to head of for two days of Bow Hunting in the Upper Hunter Valley.
So off we head on the two hour drive to the property, the drive only seams to take 5 minutes as the trip is filled with endless questions and possible scenarios formulated by Tim who is on his first big hunting trip and has been looking forward to this since the start of the school holidays, and I have been counting the days to just quietly.
We arrive at the property around 6.00am as planed and are greeted by Scott the property manager with a smile, hand shakes and a pot of hot coffee, you gota love country people, they know what hospitality is. Over our hot drinks we discuss our plans and tell Scott how we would like to spend our first day trying to get a pig. Scott tells us that he has seen a few pigs and a heap of sign on the back paddock as he calls it.
This is a part of the property I have not hunted to this point, it is a remote 3000acre bush block, another 15km or so further up the valley. Scott offers to take us up there and show us around as the constant light rain has ruined his plans to brand 40 head of cattle that are yarded out there and he has to go and let them out anyway.
Arriving at the gate we all jump in my truck with Tim sandwiched in between Scott and I, we follow a rough track that has become very greasy with the steady rain as Scott points out places that would be worth hunting, areas that he has seen pigs recently and a few trees that the boars have been rubbing. He directs my attention to the many wild fruit trees that dot the hills hear and there. I can’t help but notice that the underside of all the fruit trees are pruned perfectly level with the ground at about 1.2m. I ask Scot about this and he tells me that that is how high the pigs can reach.
Anyway after about 20 minutes of picking our way along the rough track Scott says PIGS. I stop the truck and kill the engine, I look over and see a Sow feeding on a small ridge, and she is unaware of our presence as she feeds down into a small gully and out of our sight.
I jump out of the truck and quickly get kitted up in my hunting gear, I make my way across the paddock quickly as the rain soaked ground makes it easy to move quietly, when I reach the ridge that the pig was first spotted on I look down into the gully and can see no sign of her, I start to move up the hill further into the gully when from behind a small clump of blackberry I hear the soft grunts of pigs happily turning over soil in search of food, they are no more than 10m away but on the other side of the blackberry and out of sight. I move around the black berry until I catch sight of a pig through the tangled limbs of the blackberry. Now at this point I am standing 10m from what could be my first pig taken with a bow, as you can imagine my heart is pounding so hard that im wondering if the pig can hear it, I have a good view of the pigs vitals through a window in the blackberry so I make the decision to take the shot, I draw back, place my top pin behind her front leg and let fly. In an instant I hear the unmistakable thwack of a good shot, the pig spins on the spot, walks 5m and drops dead.
On inspection I find it was a perfect double lung shot and I am STOKED. The shot was a pass through, if you look closely next to Tim’s elbow you can see my arrow still sticking out of the ground where it stoped.
http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/3813/moonansow1gb8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
A quick photo session and we are off again, we dropped Scott back to his truck and spent the rest of the day looking for pigs. We came across about 12 or so more pigs and put in 3 more stalks but things didn’t go our way for the rest of the day and we were getting very tied from the walking so we headed back for a hot meal and a good nights rest.
Our accommodation for the night was the sheering shed and I was glad to be in a dry shed for the night and not in a rain soaked tent.
http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/8256/sheershed3aw8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
6:00am start the next morning and we had decided to try our luck with the goats on day two. There is only one range with goats on it on the property but it’s a BIG STEEP one, fortunately despite the continuing rain we where able to get the 4WD up the mountain which saved us a hell of a lot of walking.
As soon as we got out of the truck near the top of the hill we where greeted by goats and it didn’t take long to get in to 20m on a ok Billy, I nailed him with pass through double lung shot and he only walked another 10m and expired.
http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/9048/moongoat8dt4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
A few more picks and we are off after another. We didn’t have to go far before we spotted another decent Billy but this one had a few lookout Nannies and it took a bit of work to get to within 30m, at this point the Nannies are starting to snort at us so I decided to take the shot, I had a good quartering away angle so I ranged him at 30m, drew back, placed the 30m pin behind the shoulder and let fly. The pass through took out a lung and the heart and he dropped on the spot.
http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/4619/moongoat13ju7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
We glassed a few more Goats but didn’t see anything worth trying for, I know there are trophy class goats on the range but it wasn’t to be this time.
The day was wearing on and after a heavy shower I decided we had better get back down the mountain before the track got to dangerous.
On the slow trip down the hill and back to the homestead we marvelled at the scenery, took some picks and talked with about some of the native birds and animals we had seen on our trip.
http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/3756/moonanhills1eb4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/125/moonanhills3hs8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
We both had a great time, Tim is already talking about what type of bow I should buy him and asking when the next trip is. I am sure this will be the start of a love of hunting for Tim as I think the seed has been well and truly planted for him.
http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/7735/moongoat10oa9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Hope you enjoyed the read.
Cheers
Clemo
I spring out of bed and quickly prepare breakfast for myself and my 6 year old son Tim; I grab the remainder of our gear and jam it into the already loaded truck. When I come back inside, I find Tim already awake, dressed in full camo, stuffing his face with cereal and at the same time grinning like a Cheshire cat. He can’t hide his excitement as we are about to head of for two days of Bow Hunting in the Upper Hunter Valley.
So off we head on the two hour drive to the property, the drive only seams to take 5 minutes as the trip is filled with endless questions and possible scenarios formulated by Tim who is on his first big hunting trip and has been looking forward to this since the start of the school holidays, and I have been counting the days to just quietly.
We arrive at the property around 6.00am as planed and are greeted by Scott the property manager with a smile, hand shakes and a pot of hot coffee, you gota love country people, they know what hospitality is. Over our hot drinks we discuss our plans and tell Scott how we would like to spend our first day trying to get a pig. Scott tells us that he has seen a few pigs and a heap of sign on the back paddock as he calls it.
This is a part of the property I have not hunted to this point, it is a remote 3000acre bush block, another 15km or so further up the valley. Scott offers to take us up there and show us around as the constant light rain has ruined his plans to brand 40 head of cattle that are yarded out there and he has to go and let them out anyway.
Arriving at the gate we all jump in my truck with Tim sandwiched in between Scott and I, we follow a rough track that has become very greasy with the steady rain as Scott points out places that would be worth hunting, areas that he has seen pigs recently and a few trees that the boars have been rubbing. He directs my attention to the many wild fruit trees that dot the hills hear and there. I can’t help but notice that the underside of all the fruit trees are pruned perfectly level with the ground at about 1.2m. I ask Scot about this and he tells me that that is how high the pigs can reach.
Anyway after about 20 minutes of picking our way along the rough track Scott says PIGS. I stop the truck and kill the engine, I look over and see a Sow feeding on a small ridge, and she is unaware of our presence as she feeds down into a small gully and out of our sight.
I jump out of the truck and quickly get kitted up in my hunting gear, I make my way across the paddock quickly as the rain soaked ground makes it easy to move quietly, when I reach the ridge that the pig was first spotted on I look down into the gully and can see no sign of her, I start to move up the hill further into the gully when from behind a small clump of blackberry I hear the soft grunts of pigs happily turning over soil in search of food, they are no more than 10m away but on the other side of the blackberry and out of sight. I move around the black berry until I catch sight of a pig through the tangled limbs of the blackberry. Now at this point I am standing 10m from what could be my first pig taken with a bow, as you can imagine my heart is pounding so hard that im wondering if the pig can hear it, I have a good view of the pigs vitals through a window in the blackberry so I make the decision to take the shot, I draw back, place my top pin behind her front leg and let fly. In an instant I hear the unmistakable thwack of a good shot, the pig spins on the spot, walks 5m and drops dead.
On inspection I find it was a perfect double lung shot and I am STOKED. The shot was a pass through, if you look closely next to Tim’s elbow you can see my arrow still sticking out of the ground where it stoped.
http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/3813/moonansow1gb8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
A quick photo session and we are off again, we dropped Scott back to his truck and spent the rest of the day looking for pigs. We came across about 12 or so more pigs and put in 3 more stalks but things didn’t go our way for the rest of the day and we were getting very tied from the walking so we headed back for a hot meal and a good nights rest.
Our accommodation for the night was the sheering shed and I was glad to be in a dry shed for the night and not in a rain soaked tent.
http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/8256/sheershed3aw8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
6:00am start the next morning and we had decided to try our luck with the goats on day two. There is only one range with goats on it on the property but it’s a BIG STEEP one, fortunately despite the continuing rain we where able to get the 4WD up the mountain which saved us a hell of a lot of walking.
As soon as we got out of the truck near the top of the hill we where greeted by goats and it didn’t take long to get in to 20m on a ok Billy, I nailed him with pass through double lung shot and he only walked another 10m and expired.
http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/9048/moongoat8dt4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
A few more picks and we are off after another. We didn’t have to go far before we spotted another decent Billy but this one had a few lookout Nannies and it took a bit of work to get to within 30m, at this point the Nannies are starting to snort at us so I decided to take the shot, I had a good quartering away angle so I ranged him at 30m, drew back, placed the 30m pin behind the shoulder and let fly. The pass through took out a lung and the heart and he dropped on the spot.
http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/4619/moongoat13ju7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
We glassed a few more Goats but didn’t see anything worth trying for, I know there are trophy class goats on the range but it wasn’t to be this time.
The day was wearing on and after a heavy shower I decided we had better get back down the mountain before the track got to dangerous.
On the slow trip down the hill and back to the homestead we marvelled at the scenery, took some picks and talked with about some of the native birds and animals we had seen on our trip.
http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/3756/moonanhills1eb4.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/125/moonanhills3hs8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
We both had a great time, Tim is already talking about what type of bow I should buy him and asking when the next trip is. I am sure this will be the start of a love of hunting for Tim as I think the seed has been well and truly planted for him.
http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/7735/moongoat10oa9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Hope you enjoyed the read.
Cheers
Clemo