by Presson » 28 Mar 2017, 7:49 am
I see a lot of hunters sharing the results of their hunting. It's usually a photo of a trophy stag, countless rabbits, a dog as large as a small man or a pig that looks like it could eat a man. Let me balance that out with my reality.
My brother and I just went on our first hunt yesterday. Neither of us have any experience so we're starting at the back of the grid. We picked a forest, booked it in, planned the whole trip (haha), loaded the car and off we went to bag ourselves some meat.
Rather than recount the whole story, I'll just hit the highlights… or is it lowlights in this case?
- Arrived all cheerful to be greeted by a gate. There goes our campsite. Turns out the gate was marked on the map but it was slightly obscured by other markings and I overlooked it. Lesson learned.
- After doing some research many people suggested that you can get by with a normal road car in a forest. They must have been having a laugh. What they probably meant is you can drive up to a forest and then walk in. Granted there might be some forests with decent roads but my point is, don't count on it and certainly don't expect to come out if it rains. Lesson learned.
- I didn't plan for an alternate campsite. I was so set on the one I picked because I suspected we might have a hard time driving in. I was right but I still should have planned for an alternate site. Lesson learned.
- Once we decided to drive in with a small hatchback low to the ground we were pretty committed, and a little bit silly. I kid you not, not 5 min in we almost got stuck going down a fire-trail that we had no business driving on. We were barely able to reverse out. Lesson learned.
- After the scary moment reversing out we stuck to easier trails and some minutes later found a decent campsite. Turns out what was a good campsite in the evening was torturous the following day in full sun. Lesson learned.
- After setting up camp we went for a scout down the same road we got stuck on earlier. It was meant to be a short scout to see what the forest was like. Rather than sticking to the trail we went off it to take a short cut. Hahaha. Over two hours later we arrived at our camp exhausted. Our shortcut took us in the completely opposite direction! We climbed and climbed until we were sore and came upon a trail that looped around an extra 4 or so kms. We could have avoided it all with some better map reading. Lesson learned.
- During this scout my brother's boots literally fell apart. He hadn't worn them for years and the rubber just basically disintegrated. All he had for the next day was a pair of Vans… Lesson learned.
- The next morning we got up all excited for our first hunt. We set off early after a quick breakfast. Our pace was much slower than the day before. Partly to keep quiet but mostly because we were still sore from the scout that beat us up! Lesson learned.
- As much as we tried to go off the trails we were just too loud in the scrub. I'd like to say lesson learned but we have a lot to learn here. Lesson to be learned.
- We casually walked, stopping often, taking in the sounds, smells and sights. Unfortunately, apart from some local wildlife we did not see anything. This hunting business is not easy. You can't just expect to turn up and blow your load. Lesson learned.
- Heading back to camp we were really sore. The hills just took it out of us. I won't pretend we're the most healthy guys around but we're not exactly sloths either. Still, there's a difference between jogging in the burbs and climbing rough terrain with a bunch of gear weighing you down. Lesson learned.
- At the campsite during lunch the sun was hammering us and we just looked at each other and thought there is no way we can take another hour of this and we packed it in a day early….
A lot of things didn’t go our way. We could have planned it better and ummed and ahhed but in the end we just had to have a go and we really did want to do it on our own. There's no better lesson learned than a hard one and there were a lot of them. In that regard you could say this was a very successful trip.
I've painted a very negative picture of our trip. It wasn't all that bad. There were a lot of laughs along the way and a lot of bonding between two brothers. We'll count that as a success too.
We drove home defeated and exhausted but after the long initial silence in the car, individually reflecting on the experience, we started planning our next trip. Armed with the lessons we learned we'll head out again that little bit better equipped and when the next trip smashes us with yet more unexpected lessons, we'll just cop them and try again and again.