What did you do today?

[Oldbloke]

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[deye243]

Well,not today,but yesterday,I shot this 19x19 sambar stag with a 165gn SGK out of my howa superlite offhand from 120m.
Been 22 years since I last hunted sambar and only the second one I've got on the ground. Pretty chuffed !

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Bloody well done big feller

[Wm.Traynor]

Good onya bigpete

[Flyonline]

Saweeet, but we need more than that!

[Oldbloke]

Saweeet, but we need more than that!

Too busy trying to get the meat back to SA and in the fridge.

[bigpete]

Saweeet, but we need more than that!

Too busy trying to get the meat back to SA and in the fridge.

Its colder in the esky

[bigpete]

Saweeet, but we need more than that!

Its honestly not much of a story,and also quite a tale ! Lol

So it begins last Tuesday morning with the missus and I headed off to Riddells Creek to stop over at a mates places. 1.5 hours out,on the Wimmera Highway, the fan belt on the RTV disintegrated. Of course we had virtually no signal but between ourselves and 2 of my mates we managed to organise an RACV bloke to come out and fit a new belt for $310 and 3 hours down time. I was nearly ready to drive home as that amount ate massively into my fuel budget but Jessica talked me into soldiering on.
Stayed at my mates the night,and attempted to make an early start the next morning which was foiled by a lot of stuffing around at the local chemist trying to get Jessica's meds. Eventually left at 10.30am heading for Rubicon,but not after my mate messaged me to tell me to check my oil as the RTV had leaked a heap where it was parked. So now I've also got a leak around the front crank seal,yay.
Got to Rubicon boys camp, it was a disgusting muddy swamp. No way we could set up a fly camp there. So we back tracked a bit to Kendall's camp ground. Much nicer,but everything was completely saturated and it never stopped drizzling. I went for one poke around across the river and quickly decided the bush and terrain was too wet,too thick,and too steep for me to even bother with. Got back to camp to find the Forest Fire Authority bloke telling the missus that he was going to lock the gates to the camp ground the next morning so we had to be out by then. We tried to get a fire going but it was no good,so we crawled into bed at 6pm just to get warm. We were out of there by 8am and gone the next morning. Only good thing there was the fungi and birds

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We arrived at our new destination, James camping reserve,by about 9.30am. To our utter joy it was a beautiful little campground, lovely flat grassy areas,nice little toiler block,wooden tables,and nice trees to set up our fly camp under. And a lovely little stream close handy. Its also set directly in the middle of state forest. We quckly stet up our fly camp and did a bloody good job of it if I do say so myself,then Jessica went off looking for mushrooms ( she found Lepista Nuda right by camp ) while I just chilled out and watched birds for a bit. By 10.30 I was getting itchy feet so I got my hunting gear prepared,and by 11 I was across the road working my way up the hill. I'd love to say I was stealth impersonated,but a bloke my size with arthritic knees and 30% hearing loss ain't likely to be silent and won't even know half the noise he's making!
Anyway i worked my way up through a heap of granite boulders until I found a bit of sign on a game trail,which I then followed as quietly as I could,which obviously wasn't silent as next thing I got honked at by a sambar in a shallow gully 70m away ! I seen 2 scoot off downhill towards the road ( a fact later confirmed during the carry out ) and the other one ran ( but not bolted ) up the other side of the gully and stopped around 120m side on with only his body and base of his neck visible. As he was running I flicked the safety and lense cover off and grabbed the flexmark caller out of my pocket to give him a bit of a squeak,as soon as he was stopped I dropped the cross-hairs on his chest,the shot surprised me,I lost him in the recoil,reloaded,then picked him up in the scope where he'd dropped on the spot from a spine shot. I watched for a few seconds to confirm this then made my way over as fast as I could to finish him with a neck shot. It was then I got the shakes as I realised that he was actually not a bad stag with a huge body ! I spent a while getting a couple of decent photos then set about taking the backstraps, back legs, and head off,all of which I took in one go. It was only 500m downhill but felt like 5lm and I completely f***ed my knees but it was worth it !

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My mate came the next morning for a hunt to be greeted by a semi cleaned stags skull on the back of my ute and a cocky grin lol. He went out for a walk while we packed camp up and bumped a deer but didn't get a shot,then we headed back to his place at Riddells Creek,did a bit of work on the RTV ( it had lost a blinler and a brake light too ) had a shower and tea then crashed the night in preparation for a stressful ( I was worried about the oil leak,we stopped ever 200km to check ) drive home with an esky ¾ full of deer meat

[bigpete]

Oh,I'd like to add......
Total hunting time was 1 hour
Butchering and packing out 2 hours
The missus is doing all the work cleaning the head for me as she is experienced in skull prep and loves doing it. I was just going to skull cap it lol

[Wm.Traynor]

Very good story and excellent pics. Thanks bigpete

[bigpete]

Today I'm cutting up the meat. Don't those rump steaks look good !

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[Lazarus]

They look good

Thanks Wm.

[Lazarus]

I finished a small fish fillet knife to pair with the big meat slicer, so I gave them both a tatt each to celebrate.

The big one is from a solid chainsaw bar and the little one is from the skin of a laminated saw bar

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Laz how do they heat treat the reason I ask is chainsaw bars file just as easy as mild steel .

Well, these are as hard as buggery Deye, I have to get the tangs red hot then cooled, 3 times to be able to drill them, so I go by the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy.

The partner of one of my nieces does contract butchering and he's using two I made for him, he reckons they hold an edge as well as the commercial knives.

This pic shows the sharp cut off of the blueing where the water line was on a magnum tanto I'm doing at the moment.

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[deye243]

Yeah its one thing I have not been able to get my head around .
I can file but they wear so well with a chain running over them and as for drilling them I know as we used to cut them and use them as auger cutter's for house stumps .

[bigpete]

Very good story and excellent pics. Thanks bigpete

Thanks I'm glad someone appreciates the effort lol

[Flyonline]

Thanks Pete, sounds like something you'll remember for a while! I think the yanks say it best about getting lucky - sometimes the blind squirrel finds the nuts!!

Did he have a lot of fat on him? Kinda looks like it from the photos and the last couple of years have been so good everything I've opened up in the last year or so has been in superb condition.

Sounds like you wouldn't have got much fishing in anyway with all the rain

[bigpete]

Thanks Pete, sounds like something you'll remember for a while! I think the yanks say it best about getting lucky - sometimes the blind squirrel finds the nuts!!

Did he have a lot of fat on him? Kinda looks like it from the photos and the last couple of years have been so good everything I've opened up in the last year or so has been in superb condition.

Sounds like you wouldn't have got much fishing in anyway with all the rain

While I've no doubt there was a fair amount of luck involved, I'm generally not too bad a hunter lol.

No fat on him at all but he was definitely in very good condition all round.

We didn't even wet a line. There was no point. The Rubicon River was flowing way too fast and the little creek by James camping reserve was too small and we were too busy sorting a deer out by the then lol

[bigpete]

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Cooked up my first bit of venison tonight,bloody delicious albeit slightly chewy.

[Flyonline]

Sorry Pete, wasn't meaning to imply you were a rubbish hunter, more that sometimes luck just lines up and everything goes right!

Reckon there's a very fine line between venison cooked perfectly and overcooked. About 2 sips of a beer at most

I ground up a small portion of sambar myself on a grinder that I think was my great-grandma's (definitely at least my grandma's) that my mum had for ages and never used. I sharpened up the blades, flattened off the die and gave it a quick oil and it ground it perfectly. Good for the small amounts, don't know I'd want to be doing 20kg by hand though

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It's been so well used that the fluting inside is almost worn smooth, might have to see if I can get someone to put a weld along the top to make it a tighter fit, though not sure how well it would work being cast.

Took my Moroka QR pack rifle sling for a walk the other day and I have to admit to being a little disappointed, I ended up with just a sore shoulder afterwards. It might be my older pack, so I'll have to have a bit of a play and see if I can get it to sit better. On a better note, my new bino rig works a treat, should have got one much earlier though being a skinny white bloke, it's made for slightly more generous sizes so I may have to do a bit of remedial work to make it fit perfectly.

[bigpete]

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Today I found some lepista nuda aka wood blewitts at work,which is quite funny as I've been trying to find them for years and this year we've been finding them everywhere!
Also went and picked up my new Bushmeister BA-X12 and a box of Federal Black Cloud 3" steel BBs. Bloody nice shotgun. Should be fun

[Oldbloke]

A walk around some wet lands yesterday resulted in this.

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[bigpete]

Hmm,looks like an immature native hen ?

[Oldbloke]

It was on its own. No swamp hens close. ?

They are listed as in that wet land and looks like the pic?

[bigpete]

It was on its own. No swamp hens close. ?

They are listed as in that wet land and looks like the pic?

I didn't notice you'd already identified it. I've not seen a spotted crake from that angle and I couldn't for the life of me work out what it was lol

[bigpete]

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These are the only crake photos I have,one is a spotted and one is a spotless

[Oldbloke]

Sooo, both have yellow beak. Sooo, looks like one to me?

[Wm.Traynor]

You blokes are ornithologists

[bigpete]

Sooo, both have yellow beak. Sooo, looks like one to me?

Absolutely

[Oldbloke]

You blokes are ornithologists

Well, I'm not. But yrs ago took a lot of fauna/flora pics. Starting to take it up again now I'm retired and getting about a bit.

There are a few shooters about that are into wildlife photography.

[Wm.Traynor]

Good for you Oldbloke
I always liked birds and years ago I bought a copy of Knight and Pizzey, although these days bird identification is probably easier with your phone or a desktop.

[wanneroo]

Summer has fully kicked in here, temps were very pleasant until 2 weeks ago and then we've had a lot of humidity and a lot of smoke at times from the big fires in Quebec.

Two weeks ago I went to the Atlantic Ocean and spent a week there at a house on the ocean with family. Pretty good vacation and enjoyed it. Had a bit of drama on the way though, a pothole took out a tire and then I had to drive on the wheel to get to a turn out that was safer to change the tire. So ended up having to have a new wheel shipped to the house overnight and then order new tires locally. $1500 bucks for that adventure with the blown tire.

Also picked up a bad ear infection from the ocean water, so been dealing with that.

On the way back I stopped at Sig Sauer in New Hampshire. They have a complex with the Academy, a factory store, an indoor shooting range and a little museum. I filmed a one minute Youtube short of the museum, you can check it out on my channel.

The factory store is a big building, fully stocked with everything in Sig Sauers line, all their guns, optics, suppressors, parts, accessories, clothing, etc. Unfortunately did not film in the store as Youtube would flip out over anything that would look like it's promoting the sale of guns.

I then drove up to North Conway, New Hampshire, over the White Mountains and then into Vermont. Vermont is one of my favorite places to drive around. It's a beautiful rural state that likes good food. I went up close to the Quebec border to one of my favorite road side stops, Cajun's to get a Cajun Burger. If you get within 20 miles of the Quebec border in Vermont, many of the last names or names of the businesses are French and you will hear French spoken with French intermixed with English as well. Unfortunately the smoke from the fires obscured a lot of the scenic views on this trip.

Then headed down the empty interstate to Lebanon, NH to stay the night. Next morning crossed back into Vermont to the King Arthur Flour complex. King Arthur has been around since 1790 and they make the best flour. They set up this nice tourist trap with a factory store, cafe and a baking school. The food was really good and bought some baking mixes and an apple pie. I made their fudge brownies yesterday with one of their box mixes, excellent.

Then drove down through Vermont to the original Vermont Country Store. Vermont Country Store is a big mail order catalog operation these days but still maintains 2 tourist trap stores including their original store in the tiny town of Weston. I stopped there for lunch and browsing around the store for maple syrup and other essentials.

Then over to Saratoga Springs, New York for a Tears for Fears concert. Anyone into 80s music and the MTV era knows who Tears for Fears is. They put out a new album recently and they played their new album and some of the 80s hits. I'd estimate 10k to 15k people were there. They are still very talented and play well.

Before leaving town I visited the Saratoga Auto Museum which had the James Bond vehicle collection on display. Owned by the Broccoli family, this is a collection of vehicle artifacts of stunt vehicles that were used in the James Bond films. I did a bunch of filming here so will put some Youtube shorts out on these cars.

Now home, the range is over grown despite mowing it a few weeks ago so I have some range maintenance to do, a ton of Youtube filming and various projects to do while the weather is warm. Summer will probably go fast.