Ever found yourself with your heart racing as a majestic deer emerges from the brush, gun in hand? Do you still get buck fever? That's just a taste of what Dr. Yannick and I breakdown in our latest outdoor escapade, complete with the thrills of stalking, the art of crafting fox skin hats, and the tactical dance of trapping in Western Australia. We even tease our frostbitten future plans to track muskox across Greenland's icy expanse.
Swap your hiking boots for waders as we swim into the wild tales of two Aussies, Yannick and I, who found kinship amidst the Canadian pines on a guided moose hunt. We'll regale you with the camaraderie, the strategic calling, and the thundering hooves that led us to a triumphant harvest. Our adventure didn't stop at the hunt; join us around the campfire as we share hard-earned wisdom on traveling with your prize, the meticulous choices of an Esky, and the ins-and-outs of airline meat transportation.
Pull up a chair and pour a stiff one as we recount a series of misadventures involving a cheeky descent in the bush, an elusive chocolate buck, and the humorous hurdles of swollen rivers and forgettable horse names. Our tales from the wilderness are garnished with a pinch of wisdom on traditional hunting equipment, from double rifles to the trusty bow, and wrapped up with a bow of practical advice on how to bring home the bacon—or rather, the venison. It's not just about the hunt; it's about savoring the journey, the memories, and yes, the meat. So join Dr. Yannick and I for a romp through the untamed tales of hunters and their stories.
For the latest information, news, giveaways and anything mentioned on the show head over to our Facebook, Instagram or website.
If you have a question, comment, topic, gear review suggestion or a guest that you'd like to hear on the show, shoot an email to accuratehunts@gmail.com or via our socials.
Ever found yourself with your heart racing as a majestic deer emerges from the brush, gun in hand? Do you still get buck fever? That's just a taste of what Dr. Yannick and I breakdown in our latest outdoor escapade, complete with the thrills of stalking, the art of crafting fox skin hats, and the tactical dance of trapping in Western Australia. We even tease our frostbitten future plans to track muskox across Greenland's icy expanse.
Swap your hiking boots for waders as we swim into the wild tales of two Aussies, Yannick and I, who found kinship amidst the Canadian pines on a guided moose hunt. We'll regale you with the camaraderie, the strategic calling, and the thundering hooves that led us to a triumphant harvest. Our adventure didn't stop at the hunt; join us around the campfire as we share hard-earned wisdom on traveling with your prize, the meticulous choices of an Esky, and the ins-and-outs of airline meat transportation.
Pull up a chair and pour a stiff one as we recount a series of misadventures involving a cheeky descent in the bush, an elusive chocolate buck, and the humorous hurdles of swollen rivers and forgettable horse names. Our tales from the wilderness are garnished with a pinch of wisdom on traditional hunting equipment, from double rifles to the trusty bow, and wrapped up with a bow of practical advice on how to bring home the bacon—or rather, the venison. It's not just about the hunt; it's about savoring the journey, the memories, and yes, the meat. So join Dr. Yannick and I for a romp through the untamed tales of hunters and their stories.
For the latest information, news, giveaways and anything mentioned on the show head over to our Facebook, Instagram or website.
If you have a question, comment, topic, gear review suggestion or a guest that you'd like to hear on the show, shoot an email to accuratehunts@gmail.com or via our socials.
On the 10th episode of our Huron Hunts. For those that haven't shot one or seen one, it's basically a double barrel, side-by-side shotgun, but shooting a rifle cartridge. Correct, yeah, so it's still rifled in the barrel. Yep, both barrels are actually slightly pointed.
Speaker 2:No, they're actually parallel and your kind of impact point is designed to be in the center of your two points of impact.
Speaker 1:What happened next was from my vantage point. I'll give you my part of the story. I saw another deer come from our left and the little raghorn buck sort of two and a half year old thing came running into our croak and was only like 40 meters from us and then he steps out from behind the blackberry fig and he was a toad.
Speaker 2:He was just oh dude. So you've got to understand. I come from Western Australia. We don't really. I mean, we've got the odd feral deer that's kind of running around in the state forest, but deer hunting's not really a thing over there.
Speaker 1:Welcome to another episode of Accurate Hunts Life Outdoors. I've got my good friend, Dr Yannick with us. For those that are watching, you get to see what he looks like. Finally, I've spoken about you a fair bit. Yeah, but Yannick was on our.
Speaker 2:I hope I live up to expectations.
Speaker 1:No, it's disappointing in all accounts, to be honest, including being a friend. I forgot my hat. I'll be back. If you are watching, you get to enjoy the visuals, but if you're listening, you'll have to imagine what I'm wearing.
Speaker 2:How would you describe it?
Speaker 1:A fashion statement. Yannick and I have got some plans in a few years' time to go and visit some colder areas, ie Greenland, and chase muskox around.
Speaker 2:Needed appropriate attire.
Speaker 1:Appropriate attire, and what he's done here is he's made me a fox skin hat, but it's not just for many foxes. How did you get these ones?
Speaker 2:They were trapped.
Speaker 1:It've been my latest obsession I want to say going down that rabbit hole, but it's more of a fox hole, more of a yeah, more of a dirt hole really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a fair obsession time consuming, very time consuming and hard to work out, which is hard when you're time poor. Um, very hard to work out. There's a lot of factors. I think it's like fishing like you gotta, there's so many variables and you don't know which one you're stuffing up. Yeah, you change something and you're still stuffing up, so, but then you don't know if going back to what you're doing originally with the one thing that you changed was the right thing to do or not. So, yeah, steep learning curve and you've been.
Speaker 1:The success has increased, though.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's starting to get in there. How many?
Speaker 1:are you?
Speaker 2:up to I think I'm only up to about here maybe a dozen, 13 or so, but it's getting there, cats too, yeah, I've got two cats as well. I've managed to catch, but it's yeah, with summer coming, the young pups and all that are a little bit easier to trick into getting into your sets and whatnot, what?
Speaker 1:are your rules over there for trapping? It's a bit loose.
Speaker 2:It's actually. Yeah, it's not as bad as a lot of other places in the country. I'm from Perth, WA.
Speaker 1:You can put the accent or put some subtitles over it. Dear.
Speaker 2:The. Yeah, it's a little bit more lax in some other states I know in some states it's completely banned, especially using foothold traps. In WA it can only be on non-residential property, so it has to be rural listed and you can use soft-jaw traps only, so you can't use steel-jaw trap. Well, soft-jaw traps are still a steel-jaw trap, but they've got on the on the inside of the jaw and the spacing in the gap is actually wider. Still, break your finger. No, no, no, this is not from a trap. I have caught my fingers multiple times. I've caught more fingers than Foxes to be perfectly honest.
Speaker 2:So no, it won't break your your finger, but, um, it's a, it's a quite a job to to get your finger out once it's a clamp shut on it, which is the point of it, I guess.
Speaker 1:Yeah and what sort of I know you've mentioned a few things when we talk about it tactics as far as finding corners and piss points or whatever well, it's not dissimilar to chasing deer.
Speaker 2:Uh, it's, you've. They've all got their travel travel corridors, their travel corridors, their travel routes. There's set areas where they're gonna pick a particular vantage point, a particular crossing path. They like the edges of brush that leads onto paddock where they can kind of cross and they've got plenty of cover to kind of get away if they sense themselves to be in harm's way. And if you find an intersection where multiple paths connect, that's likely to be a hotspot. When you've got multiple channels feeding into that one point, it maximises your chances of putting your set in front of a fox's nose.
Speaker 1:Are you finding them just by looking, like you're just actually seeing foxes on a track and you're like, oh, I'll go and look at that.
Speaker 2:Or is it? I think the old trapper's mantra is um set on sign. So you want to um basically hunt for sign tracks, scat um, kill sites, um where they've scavenged uh kind of carcasses or or carrying um and they're going to be your kind of principal points of uh focus. I trap a lot of the places where I've been fox whistling for yeah, I hate to say it now, but years, over a decade, maybe close to two um, but uh, yeah, so I know kind of the areas where their hidey holes are. And then you, it's just a matter of kind of nutting out where their, their sign is and um kind of uh hopefully connecting um. There's nothing as exciting as finding one in a trap in this, nothing as disappointing as running your entire trap line and coming up with an empty handed, and what are you doing when you get one Dispatching?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've got a little 22,. I'll just use a little 22 short. How mad are they? Hey, how cranky are they? Depends on the fox, really. Some of them are pretty unhappy, some of them are pretty aggressive when they see you coming in, and others are just very, very, very placid. I think it's a lot of people. They all have a bit of a different personality, just content they know the end's here. Oh yeah, some of them are just like well, yeah.
Speaker 1:We're done. We're done. The time here is done. What about the cats? Are they a bycatch? Cats are. Are you targeting them, or is it just a?
Speaker 2:bycatch. No, it's more of a bycatch. So principally I'm setting for foxes. There's many more foxes in the areas where I trap than cats, but they'll come in. They're actually easier to catch than foxes. Their sense of smell isn't as acute, they're much more curious and they'll speak a lot less. So cats target cats. They'll use what's called flagging, where you kind of like it will dangle like a feather or put some feathers and stuff in a dirt hole at the base of your set to attract them to it, whereas if you did something like that for a fox, they'd sense that something wasn't quite right and be gored. What else can you trap?
Speaker 2:CDs.
Speaker 1:Oh, just for.
Speaker 2:Just for reflecting. And yeah, like a giant cat toy out in the bush.
Speaker 1:My only trapping experience was a little slip noose. I set under a hole on a fence many years ago and I caught a rabbit around the waist. So I got the head through and the front legs but then got caught. And then my mate said what are you going to do? I said I'll let it go. He said why? I said I just wanted to see if I could. I didn't need to, fair enough. And then we let it go. Never saw it again. But that's my only trapping experience. There's not much trapping in Australia as a culture anymore.
Speaker 2:I think the biggest cohort, the biggest contingent is probably the wild dog guys who do wild dog control for the cattle ranches and that there's quite a few Big over your side Cattle ranches over in WA and I think Queensland makes up the bulk of the kind of the trapping community in Australia.
Speaker 1:We've got a bit of a thing here in New South Wales with dogs that are a bit more protected and less trapped and shot the wild dogs yeah.
Speaker 2:Is that?
Speaker 1:right, yeah, just because they're more city people, yeah, like the Brumbies, they have a bit of protected status. Brumbies, they have a bit of protected status. Oh right, okay, working on that. I think it just got removed from memory. The dingoes just got changed from a protected species yep yep, yep, just got taken off that list anyway. So I've uh, we were in camp the other day and I can't remember what I said, but in mid conversation I flicked my tail. Yes, it's, it's quite the statement piece.
Speaker 2:I think he's a. He's a guy with long hair trapped in a guy with short hair's body I'm transitioning, it's natural yeah I look forward to it.
Speaker 1:I look forward to wearing this uh on our future journeys um. It's extremely warm, it's not warm.
Speaker 2:It's definitely warm talking about journeys.
Speaker 1:We've uh been mates. For how old's your eldest now? Eight. She's nine, nine, so eight years because it's just before her first birthday.
Speaker 1:Yeah, nick and I met over in Canada. I don't know if I've fully told him this story, but I was working in Canada as a hunting guide and he came over as a client for that company and I got placed with him and we had a few conversations briefly and then we basically headed out the next day and packed up and loaded up. But it was actually the first time I'd guided a moose hunt and I'd never seen a moose before. That we did. Alright, we're connected. Yeah, we definitely connected. And I was telling someone this story the other day and I said, geez, I think I'd feel hard done by if I flew all the way from Australia To meet an Aussie, to meet an Aussie and to hunt moose with an Aussie, but it's worked out well for both of us.
Speaker 2:I think there's more Aussies in Canada than Canadians, to be honest.
Speaker 1:Yeah, especially in that side of industry, the guiding side.
Speaker 2:It's like English people in Australia.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, it's also comfortable because you're with an Aussie. You know you're not with someone, but no, it worked out well.
Speaker 2:I think most of our jokes kind of went over our wrangler's head, though yes, he was quite tall, but all the jokes went over his head.
Speaker 1:De, he was quite tall, but all the jokes went over his head. Devin yeah, interesting name. Definitely not something you hear in Australia, devin no, he was good, and there's one photo and I'll just never forget this photo of him. When he finally laid eyes, it was the biggest moose he'd ever seen. As a Canadian, let me have a sneak Phew, pardon me. And just the look on his face when he actually walked up on this thing, it was just like a shock. This thing had no ground. Shrinkage.
Speaker 2:No, I think of all the critters I've chased a lot do have an element of ground shrinkage. This had quite the opposite Ground growage. That's the thing, Starting to wonder how on earth you're going to get this thing from point A to point B once it's on the ground.
Speaker 1:And point A was a two-day horse ride in to a place called Boulder Creek, and we'd been in there for a few days too.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Had some ups and downs and we did speak about this in the previous podcast, but just touching on it for new listeners. But I'm pretty sure we saw that moose earlier on in the week, a fair way away. Yeah, and there was just a glimpse or it was a long distance.
Speaker 1:End of day I think it was yeah and he was up on that face and very characteristic antlers on him, size, wise and makeup. But we couldn't do anything about it. It was too late in the day or whatnot. And then we hunted a bit more. I fell off in a creek, fell off the horse, found big moose antler, which is actually above the camera at the moment, turned into a chandelier. There's a picture of Yannick and I sitting in it using it as a chair. Is that big? Yeah, big enough.
Speaker 2:Well, I think most things are big enough for me. You're a small guy.
Speaker 1:Speaking about ground shrinkage, probably sitting in a hog deer antler in person, uh. And then that hunt kind of just unfolded pretty textbook, we use the horses as a decoy. We had some brown horses and they looked like, you know, female moose cows. So we uh set them up, probably 50 or 100 meters up off the bottom of this big wide valley I think the valley was about 200 meters wide, this big flat section, and then both sides started to creep up from there and we went up about 100 yards and the horses were just below us tied up, just tied up to a tree. They didn't know what they were doing, they didn't realize they were used as decoys.
Speaker 1:I'm probably happy not to be walking around yeah, enjoying a rest tie them up and then went up above them and started doing some calling and yannick's actually a professional moose caller and he's going to give us an example right now. Oh, come on, put me on the spot. Come on, it's all nose. Well, you don't have to do it with your fingers but it's so surprising when there's such huge animals and all they can produce is weird noises. And that's sorry. That's a female. That's a female. Yeah, that's a cow moose.
Speaker 2:The bull makes an even stranger noise. That's a female. That's a female. Yeah, that's a cow moose. The bull makes an even stranger noise Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, and that's it. It travels so far that sound it's a real drummy sound. Yeah, it'll travel.
Speaker 1:If you've ever heard a emu out in the bush Similar, yeah, you can hear it coming from a while away, this sort of deep clicking noise. I liken it to that. But so we were doing the female calls and I think you spotted it first. But we just see these big white paddles, not only just up the other side of this flat, but then it dropped down and then up again and then he was on that second ridge. Second ridge, yeah, so, which was probably 800, 600 to 800.
Speaker 1:I can't quite remember the distance, I don't even think we ranged it, and then he was responding and coming in, he could hear us. So that was pretty cool, traveled a fair way and we could watch him. But then he went out of sight and I said to yannick I was pretty confident at this point because he still didn't know, I'd never seen a moose before and secretly I was packing it and so excited. But he's a confident shooter. You had blair's gun, yeah, 300 wind mag or something, and he's confident shooter. And, uh, you had Blair's gun, yeah, blair's gun, yeah, 300, win Mag or something, win Mag, yeah, and he was a confident shooter and accurate enough. So we were sort of looking at the 300 to 350 or so. I'm happy it was our maximum range and I said I remember saying he's going to come down out of sight. We won't see him for a little while. I'm pretty sure he's going to pop up right there and just in my moose hunting experience he did exactly what I said he'd do.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Just cemented my trust in my experience, confidence in the guide. Fake it till you make it.
Speaker 1:Well, we were making it and he popped up exactly where we thought, and then he paused for a moment. We called, he called, he moved a bit further and he was broadside at 333 or something. It was yeah, yeah. And you had a stable rest, you had your bog pod Yep, two-legged thing.
Speaker 2:No, it was a tripod with a little yoke on top.
Speaker 1:That's right, and you had your binos, you could also strap on yeah, cool bit of kit, that thing. Anyway, strapped on that solid rest sitting on the ground we weren't standing, but, yeah, sitting, because we were on the steep slope and you shot straight across, smoked him right in the shoulders and he spun on the spot and I think you put a second into him at that distance again and then he just dropped and I was pretty excited because I'd never seen a moose.
Speaker 2:I was pretty excited because I'd never seen a moose.
Speaker 1:And we didn't actually know how big it was at that time, either of us. Oh, we knew it was legal. Yeah, talking about legal, there's an amount of brow points, brow times, they have to have at that time of year. It's three on at least one side, or a total of 10 points on one side, on a total, yeah, or more than 50 inches, yeah, but that's hard to judge, yeah, Especially if it's the first moose you ever see. Extremely hard to judge from a distance when you've got no idea what you know.
Speaker 1:They all look big though Used to looking at much smaller inches fallow and things, but so anyway, dropped on the spot High fives and cheers and whatnot, but we decided and it was actually a really good decision in my years of experience was to leave devon, our off-sider, where we shot from, because we couldn't actually see the moose that had disappeared into the long. When I say we could see him clearly, you think you can see something clearly, but once you get over there the brush is six foot high the uh and there was still a moose above that somehow yeah, well, they're tall animals, aren't?
Speaker 1:they size of a racehorse.
Speaker 2:Looking at the countryside, you think it's this beautiful like lush meadow, but it's actually, yeah, six foot lush, it's willow. Yeah, it's like six foot of willow that is giving you the appearance of lush meadow.
Speaker 1:Um above it and we were right there on the shoulder season where it was all the leaves, like we went in there and there's leaves, and then when we came out there was no leaves, like it was right on that cusp of fall, as they would call it, which made it much easier through the willows without leaves because you could actually see. But this thing had disappeared, just dropped and disappeared. So we left him there as a spotter and I just said hold your binoculars there, don't lose that spot. And something I do now I didn't do it then but is take a photo of that spot and then edit it, open up your phone and edit it and draw a red dot where you think you last saw the animal. So at least then, if you forget about it and you're eating something or whatever, you can look back up, find that spot and know what you're looking for.
Speaker 2:It looks very different, extremely different when you get close. So it took us some time.
Speaker 1:We grabbed our horses and led them across. We grabbed our horses and led them across. We took all of them and made Devin walk across. We walked anyway, but we were leading and six foot high, no tracks. We were just pushing our way through game trails, got up close and then we used Devin and it was getting late, yeah. We still had light for the photos. I'm not sure what time of night.
Speaker 2:The photos were last light.
Speaker 1:But it was a late like sunset over. There was nine o'clock or 8.30 or something at that time. So it was quite late in the day, early evening, and I had my Garmin in reach with me and I kind of roughly knew where he was and we got close and then finally found him and then yelled out to Devin and he came across and that's when I got the photo of his. Look on his face. Yes, I've got it.
Speaker 1:I think we were all excited. Yeah, it was pretty exciting, but then the hard work happened Like it's an incredible job cutting up Days, cutting up and removing a moose. We were lucky we had enough horses with us to get everything out in one go, so we caped it up to the back of the head on the spot and then we butchered it and took all four wheels and back straps yeah uh, and then I think you took the cape off the face there, yeah, and then we just took the.
Speaker 1:So the cape was separate, the skull was separate we had the skull cap and then the meat. Yeah, um, but that was then. We had to get back to camp. Now, withoutmin, I would have really struggled to get back because it was dark and we knew where camp was, but just finding an appropriate trail to get through was real hard. The horses were fantastic. They're pretty clever. They're pretty amazing, yeah, stalin.
Speaker 2:Stalin.
Speaker 1:With his little mustache. He was a great old horse. I have a terrible issue with remembering names and the boss would say, oh, go and take Tony, debbie and Daniel like the horses all had normal names. Go and take those three on that trip. And I'd go and get them. And then I'd come back from a 10-day trip and he's like why have you got Johnny? He's a spastic. I was like that's David. He goes no, that's Johnny. I said he's not a spastic. Now he's real broke. I just grabbed whatever horses I thought they were and I was riding pack, even though they weren't riding horses, and it was terrible. But we had a good string on that one, starling dodgers through some some pretty gnarly stuff in and out.
Speaker 2:It's amazing how they just seem to know which way to go they do know which way to go, because you end up where you're trying to get yeah, they can find a track when there isn't one.
Speaker 1:But so moose down, quartered, butchered, taken to camp. And then there was a few high fives. I think you had a little hip flask of whiskey or something. We all partook in Slept in the next morning. And then I cooked up some mousse for breakfast, fillets or something. The fillets on it are still the size of like a fallow backstrap.
Speaker 2:And then the day happens.
Speaker 1:It was a 10-day hunt with a two-day ride in and out, so 14 days in total, and I think from memory it was probably day four or five when you shot it and we stayed in for another two days and then packed out on the third day to head home and that whole time we were busy. It was cutting up meat, butchering it, turning the nose, packing it. He's still turning the nose it. It took that long. The noses just keep going.
Speaker 1:One thing about Yannick, and one of the main reasons I actually like him as a friend is he's a taxidermist, which means when I hunt with him, I don't have to do Not so much army.
Speaker 2:Personality.
Speaker 1:No, that's got ground shrinkage too. We don't have to do the taxidermy work, he can do it it for us. So turning the lips and ears on a on a moose is a. That's a day sorted.
Speaker 1:That's a day sorted, so there's a lot of time sitting in camp in the tent in the tent and uh, just enjoying that part. So it was no use to rush home. I think we got home for uh, thanksgiving. We just got out in time for thanksgiving. We went to the trailhead. Yeah, that's right. We got out to the trailhead after the two-day ride out and it was nearly dark and we got back and dinner was on the table, sort of thing, so it was there that was the best shower I've ever had in my life.
Speaker 1:I remember it well, talking about showers, we'll get to samba camp in a minute that was the best the whole room got a shower. It wasn't just me and uh anyway. So that was, yeah, the wrap up of that hunt. I mean, it was a rifle hunt. It was supposed to be an archery hunt, but I busted his arrows on the way in yeah, I had one arrow left. I said to him jokingly before we left why do you need 12? You only need one arrow, and then that's what he ended up with, because I broke.
Speaker 2:11 of them ranch on the way in to be honest, the uh, the willows were so high I reckon it would have been tough going to get it done with the boat. Hats off to the guys who do it.
Speaker 1:But yeah, and I mean that moose.
Speaker 3:If it was morning time he might have kept coming yeah, we might have been able to call him all the way in.
Speaker 1:Yeah but the benefit of rifle hunting is you don't have to. So glad we got that done. But that was adventure number one. And then he went home and I went home and we thought about each other and we're like stay in contact and crying in the shower and then, uh, speak for yourself. And then we stayed in contact and then continued chatting and whatnot and uh, I think I'd seen you.
Speaker 1:I came over for shot show or something in perth and caught up and whatnot. But then I, uh, you were bugging me. You're like I want to do a samba hunt, I want to do a samba hunt. I said, oh, I've got no idea about samba, but I picked a spot and we went down. We were down at Thalgla Valley, that's what it's called, and unprepared really, but set up a tent, went for a walk in the morning unprepared really, but set up a tent, went for a walk in the morning. I think we were 10 minutes in, just up this little ridge, saw a Samahine. I took a shot. I scared it into a position where Yannick could shoot it. I missed it so bad I think I shot under it. I remember seeing the stick that I shot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah yeah, I cut a little sapling in half.
Speaker 2:He was just flushing it for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, buck fever or whatever it was, hind fever, whatever. But missed it, clean miss. And then Nick just put another one into it because he had the better vision on the second shot. Just a better shot? Look, yet to be determined.
Speaker 2:And then you played the stereo on the car when we got back to camp. It flattened the battery. It flattened the battery, you flattened the battery, and then we were stuck in the high country without a battery?
Speaker 1:Yeah, without a set of jumpers. I forgot about that. We had to go and get reception, ring someone to come and help jumpers. Yeah, dan, dan, dan. Yeah, good old Dan, he's crackpot.
Speaker 2:Saved our bacon. Yes, he did.
Speaker 1:And then we really couldn't be bothered hunting anymore. I think we went downtown. We were there for like two nights and three days, I think, yeah, yeah. And we went out again with Dan. He took us to a different spot and showed us a few things and I think we jumped a few and got honked, but never saw any to take a shot the next day. But then we bailed out and went to town. The weather was pretty crappy, so we went to town and booked a room at the fanciest hotel this side of prison.
Speaker 2:Probably the fanciest hotel in town. To be fair, yeah, it was historic it was yep.
Speaker 1:So were the water, fittings and fixtures. It was a $90 a night kind of special hotel. And the shower head. I turned it on and it was screwed on but leaked excessively from on top to the point where as soon as you turn it on it soaked my clothes, the towel and everything outside the shower door. Everything except you, except me Not much water was coming down.
Speaker 2:It was all going horizontally.
Speaker 1:Oh, it was horrific.
Speaker 2:I remember hearing a shout from the bathroom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there was water everywhere. It was like yeah, All my dry clothes were now wet.
Speaker 2:The fitting had come off the apple.
Speaker 1:That's a consistent joke. That one, Anyway, got out of there and come back to my place and butchered up a heap of meat. Now, not only is he a taxidermist, but he's also French, which means pretty good cook Taxidermist and French.
Speaker 1:Yeah, can't be both. That's a shock. But yeah, can't be both, that's a shock. But good, cook, and I think you came back to our house and you cooked us up. It was something with the Samba. Actually, you cooked in Canada too. You did like a wild berry fruit sauce. Yeah, we picked some Juniper berries.
Speaker 2:No, they were blueberries.
Speaker 1:Wild, blueberries Wild blueberries yeah. And you made a sauce over there and did some of your mose for the whole camp, which is really nice, but then you did it at my house again, left us with a whole heap of asian recipe items that we'll never, ever use they're probably still in your pantry? No, we've moved house. I cleared them out. But who eats sesame oil? Like we need that in life? Yeah, so, but then, uh, then we do hog deer. Snake.
Speaker 1:Snake Island when I drew my hog deer tag. You're allowed to take a non-helper, which I did because it didn't help at all. Caught a pike, that's what you helped with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that was dinner for the first night.
Speaker 1:Yep, caught a pike on the way in and then I caught a flatty while we were over there. Fed us for a little bit, but no, it was a pretty unsuccessful trip. Good in as far as memories and things, but unsuccessful with harvesting yeah, pretty cool little place though very. Yeah, secluded island camp, there was some we didn't see a single deer did we?
Speaker 1:no, we didn't see a single deer. There was some deer shot on my period, but off the on the record they weren't shot during hunting hours we only found that out after and it made sense If the deer aren't there, they're somewhere right.
Speaker 1:Yes, we did do it.
Speaker 1:That is a comment. Morgan, you're probably listening at home shooting arrows in your garage. We're skipping forward a few trips now, but we went on a I'll call it another deer camp, shooting russa. And there was another, a bow hunter. We're skipping forward a few trips now, but we went on a I'll call it another deer camp, shooting Russo. And there was another a bow hunter in Camp Morgan. Great guy, great bow teacher too. Spent a lot of time with Mel, my wife, helping her sight a bow in properly and just be calm about it all. And he said something while we were out. We'd spent the morning sitting in a blind. He said, well, if the deer aren aren't here, they've got to be somewhere else. Yes, that is the truth. True words never spoken and uh, it's become a bit of an ongoing joke, but uh, so hog, deer was a bit unsuccessful. And then you actually left early. You caught the boat over a day or so before me. You had to get back. That's like yeah, yeah, yeah got out early yeah, I don't really have sea legs.
Speaker 1:That was a rough it was a rough exit when we left too um, real choppy that we had to wait out with all our stuff. I was chest high in the water because they couldn't come any closer. The tide was up and I had to wait out with all my stuff and do three trips out to the boat and back yeah, it's the sea search and rescue, isn't it?
Speaker 2:uh, yeah, come and uh yep, pick you up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was just a donation mainland, take you across the island and back. It was a great deal. They were real confident and if you're going to get stuck, you want to get stuck with those guys. Oh yeah, they're a great bunch of blokes, they were really really good.
Speaker 1:They gave some hot tips on the way back and said oh, if you'd actually want to come and shoot hog deer, don't worry about that island, go to this island. It's not legal, but it's. You know, there's hog deer on it anyway, whatever they're into. But uh, what was next? Yeah, it was deer camp rusa.
Speaker 1:Yeah there's a few social visits back and forth over to perth. There's no hunting. Oh, we went to rottenest, caught some fish, kids did well. No, but rusa camp. Every now and then I'll ring yannick and say, oh, I've got an opportunity, okay. He just says, okay, I'll get some time off, okay. So I booked a rooster trip and came over here and tried your luck with the bow for a few days and didn't quite get there. What do you got? A 300?
Speaker 2:300 Weatherby yeah.
Speaker 1:Weatherby in a single shot and got it done on a nice rooster pretty early in the trip yeah, mid-trip, mid-trip.
Speaker 1:So that was nice took that home and got a taxidermy well, you, taxidermy yourself hanging on the wall, a bit of hair slip on the face looking for another rooster cape if anyone's got one, um, get that uh, sent across to us. But then late last year I accurate hunts hq, which anyone who's listening has heard me talk about when that came about, on the way home from sort of signing the deal on that trip, I rang yannick and said I need you to be available in april and he didn't even really ask why. I think he just said okay. And then it was a discussion of when school holidays were and what you could fit in, but fallow rut this year and I locked you in and here we are. This is the tail end of that. But I want you to go back and tell us about the gun that you bought, not specifically for this trip but for future trips, and then what it is, why you bought it, it and what sort of issues you've had with it.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I'm a bit of a traditionalist Weirdo how do you want to spell it? I don't really like all the modern gadgetry. I'm more into the old school stuff. Anyway, I've been obsessed with double rifles for the last few years so finally found one that was, you know, wouldn't cost my marriage to. It was a present for yourself, wasn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah For graduating something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, passing one of my million exams that I've sat in my life. But yeah, I was at my local gun shop and I walked past the gun rack and there was a double rifle, a Sabati in 9.3 by 74 caliber. What does the arm mean? It's rimless. It's basically ballistically equivalent to the 9.3 by 62, I think it is, which is normally in bolt action rifles. This is essentially chambered for lot double rifles or single shot rifles. It's the base of the casing is different.
Speaker 1:So it's a bit more like a lever action, like a 30-30 case. It's got that wider rim on the back of the shell for ejection.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, extraction Extractors can kind of pull it out. It doesn't have a little hook, so the bolt claw can kind of yeah, it can't go over it, it sort of pushes from behind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it can't go over it. It sort of pushes from behind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, I was very excited about that. I remember that phone call. I was supposed to bring it to Rusacamp. Actually that was supposed to be its maiden voyage, and the thing about obscure calibres is that for some reason, ammunition is really hard to find, which I found out the hard way, so it took me after getting the gun.
Speaker 1:The shop didn't have any.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no. And couldn't get it. No, no, they had to get it over from over east and it took about two months to get over from over east. So I'm sitting here, desperately twiddling my thumbs, waiting for something to actually shoot out of my shiny new gun, and had had a little fox trapping uh trip planned a couple of months before going down to rooster camp. So I packed it along with me and it was going to be the first couple of rounds that I put through.
Speaker 2:It ceremoniously set the the camera up to to film the first few shots that it uh, ceremoniously set the camera up to film the first few shots that it fired. And as I lined up, I just hear this nice click. I was like what happened there? Was that a misfire? Held the barrel down, cracked it open. No, primer's perfectly smooth, hasn't been detonated. Okay, no, it didn't cock it properly. Cock it up again. Click, that's weird. It's only got a single trigger. So I pulled the trigger again. It was like okay, well, that barrel works and I cracked it open again.
Speaker 2:I had a look and it looked like the firing pin was actually broken off at the, at the, the front of the right-hand barrel, which is pretty annoying for a brand-new gun. So there were my hopes and dreams destroyed for getting a Russo with a double rifle. And, yeah, when I got back to Perth I brought it to the gun shop and they were actually really good about it. They sent it off to the gunsmith that they worked with and got it all kind of fixed up free of charge for me and it hasn't skipped a beat since then. But it did miss the rooster trip. So yeah, at that point I decided, oh well, I'll try it with my bow, got a couple of months in of archery practice, which I was getting a bit rusty with because I hadn't picked up my bow in a couple of years, and we realised the hard way when we got across to Roosacamp that my sight had been desperately yeah, one of the screws was slightly loose.
Speaker 1:Your sight had dropped about nine metres.
Speaker 2:And if you look at the slow-mo footage of the uh, the arrow coming out of the bow, it really, uh, really, paints a picture. Um, yeah, but yeah, always uh, always shoot your um shoot arrows. Uh in camp if we're going out for a hunt would be my only tip. Um, yes, that turned into a rifle hunt.
Speaker 1:So you got that pretty quickly. You got the double humming and shooting properly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the double actually regulates beautifully. It points really really nicely Open sights, but yeah.
Speaker 1:For those that haven't shot one or seen one, it's basically a double barrel, side-by-side shotgun, but shooting a rifle cartridge. Correct, yeah, so it's still rifled in the barrel. Yep, both barrels are actually slightly pointed.
Speaker 2:No, they're actually parallel and your kind of impact point is designed to be in the centre of your two points of impact.
Speaker 1:So if you're zeroed at 100, you would never have two in the same hole.
Speaker 2:They'd be left and right. You should have two holes left and right of the bullseye, essentially.
Speaker 1:Otherwise they'll cross over by how far when you say it's regulated.
Speaker 2:Probably, because otherwise they'll cross over. By how far? When you say it's regulated, what's Probably the distance of the barrel? So I only like about an inch apart from each other.
Speaker 1:To be honest, if you're getting a group, that's an inch apart with a double rifle at 100 yards, yep yeah, and open sights too, and a lot of offhand. Yeah, yeah. You're not really sitting down at a bench to do open sights.
Speaker 2:I think primarily they're designed for driven hunts in Europe for moving game, because they point very, very well. You've got two shots that you can fire off in rapid succession and it's usually close quarters hunting. And the other place, obviously, where they're famously a lot of their heritage comes from, is in Africa for dangerous game hunting, which is why you bought it. Well yeah, that's the ultimate goal. I'd like to go chase Cape Buffalo one day. You're going to shoot the musk ox with it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the ultimate goal.
Speaker 2:I'd like to go chase Cape.
Speaker 1:Buffalo. One day You're going to shoot the musk ox with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, I don't even think I'll take one, I'll just use your other barrel. Yeah, so I'd each take two bullets. Yeah, so we We've had this trip booked for a little while and then the rifle fixed itself, or you got it fixed, and then it was time to happen and you said, all right, book some flights and whatnot.
Speaker 1:And it's a bit of a busy time in my life at the moment with the new kid on the ground, which is again. I said this last episode don't get cold in winter and have a rut baby. Think about that, guys. Poor planning, poor planning. So I couldn't actually make the trip with him and I said that's fine, I'll set you up out there and leave you out there. So I picked him up at the airport 6 o'clock in the morning, drove back to my place, packed some stuff headed out there. We were out there by lunch and met up with some other fellas in camp. They were just on the tail end of their trip and they tail end of their trip and they were going home that night or next morning. They had, um, some pretty bad weather. They had, yeah, like 200, 200 mil of rain over two nights.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 150 mil over that, it was in one night yeah, that's horrific for them.
Speaker 1:We had it here, but I was in the house. They're under a tarp and in a swag. It was pretty, pretty horrendous and well the the problem with that rain was when we got there, the river was up. It was substantial. This is a river we would normally either just walk through with shoes or, you know, rock hop if it's slightly high, and this deleted and eliminated all of our rock hopping opportunities. Yeah, it was, it was motoring, it was brutal.
Speaker 1:So, you know, we got to camp, had a quick chat and packed up gear and and went for a hike and there's a bit of an area I hadn't been to before and really wanted to discover. And, uh, traditionally with the education courses there, we're a bit limited in where we want to go because we're sort of short time, success driven need to shoot a goat. This was more of an exploration. Let's go have some fun and for interest sake. We're right. I think we were right at the start of the rut, like early croaking and then towards even like now when we're home, would be, you know, full swing out there. So we were hoping to hear some and help. That hope that would guide us in our decisions and it turned out it didn't immediately, but we got riveted out. We had to go up, high up a embankment. That cost you some bruises.
Speaker 2:What Dodger omitted to tell me was that this property is pretty much sheer vertical everywhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we call it Little. New Zealand? For a reason. Little New Zealand. The camp is at a really nice spot. It's a really high vantage point with lots of viewing. The downside is to hunt. You need to drop down about 400 meter nearly vertical descent, only to go 400 meters up, ascending the other side, to then start hunting. And then the other downside is, if you shoot anything, you have to do that on the way back with with the stuff on your back so we knew that I knew that going into it was pretty intrepid, though it was good.
Speaker 2:I didn't share that. It's the kind of thing you're wondering why you're doing it, why you're doing it, but you're pretty happy. You're pretty chuffed you did it.
Speaker 1:When you get back, yes, it's that afterburn fun. So first afternoon, headed out, saw some up on the other side of the ridge, some deer, a few goats that we spooked. 10 metres in front of us, lots of goats, lots of goats. But we just came around a random finger not random, but came around the finger and for some reason I'd glassed down a bit further than I had been on the previous part of the walk, found a spiker chilling by himself, and at that time we didn't know if he was by himself. But it turns out he was.
Speaker 2:And then you can tell us how you nearly stuffed that stalk textbook, textbook, textbook stuff up graceful, graceful, like uh, I don't know we were on a steep, we were high above we were yeah we were very much, probably 100 meters high. I think thankfully the river was raging. Yeah, because it was pretty loud. I couldn't actually hear the commotion that I was making above it. But I started my sneaky descent, tried to ease myself over a fallen log and managed to end up pretty much.
Speaker 1:Head over turkey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a over T on the other side. I've got a nice bruise, I'd like to sport it and managed to dislodge a good-sized rock, probably a mango papaya would you say yeah, yeah, that went cut all the way down. Down the rock, face down in his direction, which got his attention, got his attention. He was wondering what the rock was doing down there. He didn't really pay too much attention to where we were up higher.
Speaker 1:I actually worked in our favour and actually might become one of my stalking tips. Yeah, roll a rock down to keep their attention while you move in.
Speaker 2:I was surprised that that didn't blow him out of the neighbourhood, to be perfectly honest. Then there was a bit of a tree that was in a V down the bottom of the valley that I managed to eventually get my way to without spooking half the population, just in reference to the graceful fall.
Speaker 1:If you've ever been at the pub and watched someone trip over holding a beer, that's exactly what this was. The rifle, at all times, was above ground.
Speaker 2:Oh, the rifle was unscathed.
Speaker 1:And you were rolling and tumbling and this rifle was just floating through the air and not moving somehow. And then you stood up and you still had it like a full glass of beer I can heal. Uh, the rifle can't um there got to your v and then he was alert.
Speaker 2:He knew at this stage he was, he knew something wasn't quite quite kosher and I took a shot, missed him cleanly at that stage and he trotted forward about four yards or so. And then this is why I have a double rifle I had a follow-up shot immediately there Without having to cycle one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like you wouldn't have bolt action.
Speaker 2:And yeah, ba-boom, and that was it, sacked one. Yeah, Like you wouldn't have bolt action. And yeah, ba-boom, and that was it Sacked him. Yeah, and he went down.
Speaker 1:Later to discover it was a direct headshot between his eyes Exactly where I was aiming, yeah maintain that Yannick said to me the thing with a double rifle is you just have to end up with some fur in the end of it, because you're sort of looking over two dots. You're not getting a whole lot of zoomed in view, like you would with a scope.
Speaker 2:Oh, he was probably. What about 75 yards, 73? Um. So yeah, there's, uh, you know, not a big, not a big target to line up with your, with your open sights. Um, there, I mean, that's all excuses. Really it's my own fault for bringing a double rifle he's dead? Yeah, it happened. Who was dead on the spot?
Speaker 1:happened. That made for a bit of a fun afternoon. So we did a full.
Speaker 2:No, we just gutted there we gutted him there and then uh, took the heart and intrepid trip back to chucked him on a stick over the shoulder, which I've never actually done before. Gotta get the heart as well yes, hearts in the freezer.
Speaker 1:Uh, never actually done that before, but chucked the pole between his legs and tied his legs and carried him out proper caveman style yep, and that worked fine. The river was up and we had to cross it twice to get back to camp yeah, which was the?
Speaker 1:easier route. We didn't cross it on the way there, but the easier route was downhill. It was unladen at that stage, yes, and that involved pants off, shoes off, socks off. It wasn't too deep at that point. That section was probably on the knee or lower, and then on the second crossing it got a bit deeper. I was probably halfway up through my thigh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I was up to my neck, basically.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like I hear behind me he was googling underwater. We were just pretty concerned about keeping the deer dry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it worked out fine. The head got wet on the skin is fine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but the uh, the skin. So I got back to camp and, uh, it was fair. Oh no, we got the quad bike from there up to the top, so that part saved us a little bit. But I got to camp, strung it up in camp and then sat down and had a beer everybody's wondering why we've got no pants on yeah part of the service with accurate hunts.
Speaker 1:Yep yep, nothing's missed, everyone's looked after and, again, lots of ground shrinkage. But with that cold water mate, we'll blame it on that. Yeah, um, the quad bike ride was awkward too many up a steep embankment. There was a lot of, yeah, skin on skin and only one layer of fabric got to camp, strung it up on the meat pole, sat down and had a beer and a few high fives and then you got to skinning. Yeah, ripped your skin off. Longest skinning job, perfect skin, this thing, not a hole in it and no meat left on it.
Speaker 2:Doesn't even need fleshing.
Speaker 1:No, I had a look at it, she's a clean as. So that got salted and rolled up and then dinner was had and it was, uh, call it quits for that night. We headed out the next morning chasing some croaks and steep descent, steep ascent, steep descent steep ascent, steep descent yeah, we just kept going.
Speaker 1:I kept going, saw a few. We saw 18 deer that morning, a few bucks, a few girls, a few spies, and we saw one. Well, got a glimpse of him, but he was croaking on a on a stand but across the creek and not accessible from where we were quickly and safely. So we left him and headed back up into a timbered section. And that's when it got a little bit exciting. We were kind of just talking, walking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we weren't actually hunting at that point and then heard a croak which seemed like it was 10 meters from us, but it was actually more like 150, and then quickly got up over an embankment and got eyes on it. I really had a you know three or four second look at him through some timber and he was a decent, decent buck, good timber on top, nice color, mantle, mantle skin, and. And then I saw some girls with him. So I knew he was holding them and he was croaking, not viciously, but every now and then. He wasn't like that other one, but it gave him away. We would have walked straight past him otherwise. So yannick set up probably about 15 metres, 10 metres in front of me and I motioned to him. We've got a, a buffalo horn croaker that you made me for my birthday or wedding present or something. It's pretty amazing piece of art, this thing. But I motioned to you to give him a call and you did.
Speaker 1:You had your rifle set up in the V or on the side of the tree and then you gave a croak and he went quiet. Two things one, he's either run away or two, he's coming towards us to sort of investigate. And what happened next was from my vantage point. I'll give you my part of the story. I saw another deer come from our left and this little raghorn buck sort two, two and a half year old thing came running into our croak and was only like 40 meters from us, but bothered and I said to yannick, don't shoot, it's a different deer. But he didn't hear me because he'd already pulled the trigger I thought it was the, uh, the other fella coming in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've got a bit of buck fever at that stage, yeah lucky.
Speaker 1:It was buck fever, because he missed with two bullets and the deer just stood still. Stood still when he took the first shot and then I've got it on camera just between the trees and it flinched a little at the second shot, but only the sound, and then just trotted off, yeah, and then unscathed it, uh, it crossed down and then went up the other side and I saw it. You know, there was no injury, it was not hit, walked away basically, and at that point he realized it was a different deer, so there was no reloading and re-shooting, but the big buck had gone with the girls. We heard him a bit later on, further away, so at least I know where he is for next time, I think uh instinctively I always think that they're further away than where they're actually at if I haven't ranged them and tend to miss high.
Speaker 2:So it makes for a nice clean miss.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's no, yeah, there's no mistaking if you hit with that gun.
Speaker 2:No, I don't think there's a big hole. It's not a it's a big whop. It's not a-. What pellet what projectile it are throwing uh, they're 286 grain um soft points, but um no, they, they stop things in in its track they hit hard, except when you miss right.
Speaker 1:It's a nice, nice way of doing it so that was the end of that morning was a lot of walking after that yeah, a bit more calling walk of shame we saw a few more but, uh, no bucks. So headed back to camp. That was a fair hike in and back out and then I went home, left you there for a few days. It was going to be a few days. You're going to be there monday night, tuesday night, wednesday night and come home thursday.
Speaker 2:It wasn't the case so that night I, that evening I went for a hunt just near the campsite. Just, my legs were pretty shot at this stage. I just went for a little hike down at the back of camp and found somewhat of a bit of a honey hole. I think. I found a nice little spit that kind of looked out downhill and I sat there glassing for a little while and saw a doe, caught my my eyes initially, and then I sat there glassing her for a bit and then lo and behold she another doe, popped out and then a really nice uh buck uh came out with her as well. So they were way, way, way too far, definitely out of range of my firearm.
Speaker 1:In an afternoon hunt when.
Speaker 2:I was In an afternoon hunt. It was a pretty vertical country through there, so I decided to just sit there and glass. And I glassed again and I found another buck, a bit of a smaller buck, to the left of him, about maybe 400 metres or so to the left of him, on the same face. I thought, oh, this place is worth coming back to have a look in the morning. So I came back the next morning. That night I don't know, I think it was a bit of a cold snap to come through, but they were croaking all night, were keeping me up all night.
Speaker 2:I was having a bad noise to yeah feverish dreams of a giant fellow croaking in the mist um dreams or nightmares?
Speaker 2:yeah, uh, but uh yeah, about five o'clock the next morning it was too much to to handle, so I threw my pack on and made my way down towards the nearest one I could hear, made my way down into this valley, and glass went on a little bit further along and continued to make my descent down. By the time I got down to the bottom I couldn't see him anymore, and he'd shut up as well. He'd locked his lips. He must have seen me coming down the face, but there was another one. Didn't roll any rocks down.
Speaker 2:I didn't roll any. No, that's probably what I did wrong. He was nice. I saw him on top of a nice chocolate buck. He had, yeah, pretty decent headgear on him. I just had my eight-power binos with me. I didn't have my spotting scope, I didn't get a close, close look at him, but he, yeah, I would have shot him any day of the week, but I could still hear one croaking a little bit further up.
Speaker 2:So I kept working my way down the valley and it just kept getting louder and louder and louder and I could hear him croaking until I caught a glimpse of a hind kind of up on the face and she caught a glimpse of me as well. She was on high alert and she was just staring at me. So I kind of sat there for a while and I was just glassing, glassing, glassing. I couldn't see where the croaking was coming from, but I could hear it. This noise travels so far. It's loud when you're far away, but when you're right up in their personal space it's just deafening. It's quite a haunting sound space. It's just, yeah, deafening it's. It's, uh, it's quite a haunting sound.
Speaker 2:Um, and I, yeah, I was glassing her and then I saw this little little buck kind of come out, um, from behind a little thicket, and I was like, oh, okay, he's making a big noise for, for a little buck, um, little rag one, probably, yeah, similar age to the one I missed the day before, um, and I'm like looking at him and staring at him through the binos and then all of a sudden I hear the croaking start again. But he's not croaking. I was like, hmm, all righty, there's another fella a little bit further in. So the hind and the little buck made their way down. So I kept edging a little bit closer. I was kind of on the cut bank of the of the river, uh, this stage, kind of inching my way around. Um, good, you know, one of the main benefits about being, uh, vertically challenged is that, uh, it's easy to find a hiding, uh, a hiding spot. But made my way around and, um, it was a big, uh thicket of blackberries, so pretty much just at the bank of the clearing, just above the river, and I was staring through with my binos, staring through with my binos, and then I could see the blackberry thicket just getting thrashed. I was like, oh, he's got to be back there. And the croak's getting louder, and louder and louder. And there's this perfect little kind of grassy embankment just on top that made for a perfect rest for my rifle. And I land up there and I'm looking through my binos trying to see where he's coming from, and then he steps out from behind the blackberry thicket and he was a toad. He was just oh jeez. So you've got to understand.
Speaker 2:I come from Western Australia. We don't really. I mean, we've got the odd feral deer that's kind of running around in the state forest, but deer hunting is not really a thing over there, especially not in the blocks that I kind of shoot on on the farms where I've got access to hunt. So seeing a deer is exciting for me. But seeing something of this calibre was just like oh, my heart was going a million miles an hour, let alone fully thrashing the brush and croaking at the same time. But he just came out, he put on a show for me. It was nice and cold, still early on in the morning. As he's croaking, you can see the fog kind of coming out of his mouth and he's croaking. I just had this perfect, perfect shot kind of lined up inside of 50 yards, well and truly for the double rifle range and I was like this is my buck. And yeah, pulled the trigger and that was it.
Speaker 2:It was all over mid croak and he did me the favor of rolling and falling right into the center of said blackberry thicket, rolling and falling right into the centre of said blackberry thicket and that was a bit of sport to get him out of there on my own. It was significantly larger than the spiker we'd shot a couple of days earlier. He probably weighed more than you. He definitely weighed more than me, I reckon about 120. Yeah, big bucks, yeah, he'd be, yeah, he would have been around 100, I reckon. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Big body thickness Already lost a fair bit of condition in the last two weeks, yeah, and then spent the rest of the morning kind of field dressing him, getting the back skin, the cape and the antlers and all the meat that I could carry on my small frame back up to camp. And that sheer realisation when you're thinking about that vertical descent that you've made to get to where you are.
Speaker 1:You've got to go in reverse.
Speaker 2:It's not going to get any less steep on the way up. So yeah, that hurt. I was saying to Dodge the worst part about being on your own out there, that you can't even whinge to anybody, you've just got to suck it up and do it. I like to complain about my bodily aches and pains and how hard I've got it, but there was nobody to listen, so I had to bottle it up inside.
Speaker 1:I don't give you any sympathy when I'm there anyway.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just keep walking. But yeah, no two steps at a time. 15 minutes, catch your breath. Another two steps. Took you a week to get over it took me about five hours to get back into camp, but I felt every single one of those hours At least you had all day yeah.
Speaker 1:Comfortable temperature too. It wasn't too hot.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well it was comfortable temperature by the time I got back to camp, black clouds were rolling in, started thunderstorming and then I just I was. I had a little light tarp set up kind of out there Shout out to Alton Goods. Oh yeah, if you want to sponsor me. Please get in contact. I've got. I'm a bit of an Alton Goods fan boy.
Speaker 1:I've got most of their line up now, I think uh you're pretty happy with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it held up. So then it started hailing while I was um, uh, kind of finishing the cape job out in um in camp and I was like, geez, that rain's getting heavy and I'm looking down and there's little hailstones, hot pepper and pepper in the ground in front of me. But uh, no, it held up amazingly. Yeah, I was warm and snug, it was toasty. I run their their quilt and their bag, the mattress sleeping mat, which, yeah, highly rate just for the record I'm not sponsored by them at all.
Speaker 2:This is all purchased out of my own money, but no and the little tarp and the tarp. I've got the 3x3 metre tarp.
Speaker 1:Cooking stuff yeah, all their cooking stuff, yeah he's got their undies, their socks, their toenail paint yeah, lipstick yeah yeah, so you got to enjoy it in camp by yourself. Now you sent you know favoritism and priorities. Here I get it. I left him my garment in reach and first person he texts was his wife. I know that because she screenshotted it and she sent it to me. She asked me a question. She said said what does BBD mean? Because you just sent her a text saying BBD.
Speaker 2:So I had the Garmin in reach so you have to type in every letter like an old Nokia.
Speaker 1:It's not linked up to his phone.
Speaker 2:It's even slower than the Nokia phone because you have to move the little cursor across to the letter you want.
Speaker 1:So everything was shorthand and BBD and uh, bbd, and I knew what it meant and I sent that back to her and told her what it was. But then your text come through from you and that was uh. I was very excited to hear that it was uh yeah, that was um that's a property. I haven't hunted the rut out there yet, so this is our first. That's our first rut deer from that block. We shot one pre-rut real beautiful thing. He's sitting over there on the ground. Jack's one one and genetically very similar.
Speaker 2:Very similar. I think from a distance you'd be hard-pressed to actually tease them apart. There's a few subtle differences in the head, but you'd say they definitely had the same sire.
Speaker 1:Yes, definitely in the same part of the family.
Speaker 2:So you've got it on the ground, you've got it home you've caped it, so you've got it on the ground, you've got it home, you've kept it out, you've cleaned it up. Yeah, managed to take a nice chunk out of my finger while trimming up the uh, turning the eyelids.
Speaker 1:And then you stayed for a day or so just to keep playing with the cleaning the meat up and, yeah, went on and came back to our house.
Speaker 2:And here we are. Yeah, managed to get everything, uh, butchered on a kitchen bench rather than out in the field, which is a novelty.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a bit of a cleaner space to work with. We're running a little bit low on time. I just want to finish up with some travelling with meat tips and things that I've been talking to a few people lately, but you and I have both done a bit of travelling across the country with eskies and meat obviously coming from Perth. A few things to consider and one thing that I always recommend to people is actually buy your Esky before you fly and then bring it over with your luggage in it.
Speaker 2:Use it as checked luggage, yeah.
Speaker 1:So it forms part of your bag. Two reasons Then you can continually use the same Esky, but also you've got it with you when you get there. You don't have to worry about buying it after shooting something.
Speaker 2:That was a bit of a stress of the trip before we learnt the hard way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I said I could get my hands on a foam esky and it turned out no one in town had foam eskies. Airline choice is an issue, qantas.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Qantas are pretty good.
Speaker 1:The most confident and comfortable with it.
Speaker 2:I think Jetstar do as well but you can't fly with firearms on jetstar, even though it requires some scenery.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, um, but uh, yeah, you want to check with your airline? Yeah, what's the other one, not jetstar virgin? Say no to. You can fly with a firearm, you can't fly with trophies, uh. So you can't take antlers or meat from a hunt. You can take meat from a fishing trip, but you can't take meat from a hunt. So choose your words carefully. If you do fly with virgin, but uh, no, we uh try and use qantas for those things. But a couple other things that you've done and I don't know if you knew about them or you just took them on board because I said it but you need to freeze your meat down. The qantas requirements are the meat's got to be frozen, it's got to beacced and it's got to be in a sealed, firm-sided container. So an esky, it can't be in a soft Yeti-style esky. Can't be in a hot pot, yeah, but it can be in a foam seafood-style box, which is silly, because they're softer than an esky anyway, definitely less robust.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're concerned about leakage is the main issue. So is the main issue. So one other thing I do further to that is actually wrap each piece of meat in, so it's cryovac frozen, and then when you pull it out of the freezer you wrap it in paper.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you still get condensation on the outside of it and that could cause some moisture.
Speaker 1:And the further tip is to actually freeze it in either portioned steaks, if you've got time, or square pieces of meat. So what you can do is put the meat cryovacs inside tubware containers and then freeze it, or just portion. And the reason for that is when you're putting it in the esky you don't want wasted space. Found that out the hard way as well last time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you freeze big chunks of backstrap and then all of a sudden you fit one backstrap in your esky because of how it's frozen solid that's right, and you end up with wasted space and you can't get to your.
Speaker 1:The other thing with Qantas is you can actually go up to 32 kilos if you're a Qantas Club member for one piece of luggage.
Speaker 2:And if you go a bit over, I think they just charge you a Kilo rate or something.
Speaker 1:They're a little bit more flexible on it, especially if you book the extra beforehand and not at the counter.
Speaker 2:So at the price of venison on the market, it's worth every cent Worth yeah.
Speaker 1:So you get your two check bags. So you've booked one extra check bag. I've booked an extra check bag. Yeah, so you've got a luggage bag firearm case.
Speaker 2:The firearm case, I think they count it.
Speaker 1:As sporting goods.
Speaker 2:As sporting goods, and if it comes in under the weight with your bag, it's fine.
Speaker 1:And then I've booked an extra, extra, um the esky bag, which is my ski. So, at a total weight you get, you know, either 23 or 32 kilos, depending on what class you're. Yeah, so fly with it. Yeah, frozen. But then also you've got to duct tape your esky, but you can't do it prior because they need to inspect it, yeah, when they get there. So, but uh, other than that, it's been a good trip.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you got to enjoy it yeah I'm sorry I wasn't there for that last bit. But, um, I'm sorry I wasn't there for that last bit, but also happy my legs weren't there for that last bit.
Speaker 2:No, it was an amazing adventure. This is a beautiful, beautiful property. Yeah, thank you so much for the opportunity, mate.
Speaker 1:Really appreciate it. Look forward to trying to do it again next year at Deer Camp. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Hopefully we hooked on the rut.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you had a textbook experience, so, oh, that was that's got those dates right, it's gonna be very hard to beat. Yeah well, thanks for chatting about it and until next time, talk to you then.