Hi all, first post
I've only recently picked up a rifle after bow hunting for 5 or 6 years after a case of AOH (adult onset hunting)
I've been on holidays for a few weeks and have managed to get out a bit between all the rain lately - unfortunately not a lot of large game has been seen but I've jumped a number of foxes but haven't been able to draw a bead... until today.
The plan was to hit the dry rocky face of my local SF chasing goats for the freezer, with the odd chance of a sambar in there as well and a decent chance of a fox. Reaching the parking point, I loaded up and headed off using a smaller gully between a couple of finger ridges as my access up as high as I could be bothered climbing before crossing into my favourite gully and returning downhill against the rising winds with an eye, ear and nose open for goats and anything else that wasn't supposed to be there.
As the smaller side gully I was climbing petered out onto a larger finger ridge, I joined onto an illegal motocross track. While I don't like them ripping up the bush, they do make it easier to move quickly and quietly up the ridges..... Climbing on up towards my intended highest point, I noticed a few diggings which increased in number and size, some of them quite fresh. Pigs! While I've seen a lot of activity and jumped them elsewhere, I'd never seen them on this side of the main range. Reaching a spot I could use a nice little side gully to drop into my main drainage, I looked at the map to see if there were any areas I hadn't covered yet (one of the benefits of using a tracking app!). Little spider webs of lines spread pretty well everywhere, but there was a small patch across towards where I'd shot my last goat (with the bow), so I took a rough bearing and began to side hill across the steep face through a couple of smaller folds in the hillside.
Reaching the furthest point, I spied a patch of bracken up above me in the little gully, and with some good cover below figured it would be a nice spot for a fox to hole up in. The warm sun in the winter afternoon made it a nice place for anything to be really! Sitting down against a standing stringybark, I emptied the magazine and swapped my rounds.....well around (I've been running 2 different bullets, 1 specifically for sambar and the other for just about anything else and usually have the sambar round on top with the thought that I usually have time to swap it out if I see a goat, but not the other way round). 5 minutes on the $2 button whistle had nothing to show, so I was just about to grab the phone for a bit of a map scan when movement below me in the fold of the ground caught my eye. A fox was tripping up slowly in the bottom of the fold.
Waiting until his head was behind a tree between us, I quickly flipped my ear plugs in place and readied the rifle on my knees. As he cleared the tree, I lip squeaked to stop him, and as his head came up I centered the cross hairs on his nose and squeezed off a shot. As he swam back into view through the scope, I could tell he wasn't going anywhere - even from 45m away I could see red bits on the ground. Indeed, when I went to have a look there wasn't a whole lot left of his front half inside him - a 150gr soft point from a 30-06 might have been a bit of overkill.
Finally, made up for all those others that had managed to sneak away from me!
That was it for the days fun, I did cut fresh goat tracks but never managed to find them but I was still glad to leave one less chook/lamb/native killer running around.
Thanks for reading!
Steve