Knocked off work early on Friday after a week of watching the cold and wet weather forecast for the Alpine NP, last chance at a stag for 2017.
Setup camp whilst I nearly stood on a copperhead and around 5pm threw on my gear and went for a look.
Wind was favourable, damp underfoot, about an hour in a solid brown block between a couple trees about 70m away stopped me in my tracks, me out in the open.
I stared at it for ages remembering I had been fooled by tree stumps before, but the colour was wrong.
Put the rifle up, oh s**t a fuzzy stump! No legs or neck visible, dead still and probably aware of my presence but not my location, fark what do I do?
Spotted a tree 10m to my left, if I could make there I would get cover, gun rest and hopefully and angle to ID and a shoot.
Crept about 5m, watching for movement, stopped and put the gun up just in case, he moved suddenly in full view of me now, broadside with his neck craned looking down right at me
My crosshairs were already on his shoulder, adjusted slightly to the left and squeezed, wham he took off downhill, stumbling a bit.
Made it over to where I saw him last and immediately found a chunk of flesh and some frothy blood, marked the spot on my gps, sat down and waited 15 mins before following the trail for 50m and found the spot he dropped dead.
Autopsy showed heart and lungs with a shot through both sides. Boned out his legs, neck and backstraps out and packed out a couple loads, suprisingly wasnt a big bodied animal and me being an idiot left the camera so only got a photo back near camp.
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but I gotta say he looks a bit skinny!!! 
