Ducked out yesterday afternoon/evening for a bit of a look see. Weather wasn't predicted to be great with high winds and some rain but my plan was to keep an eye on the radar and make a dash for the car or hunker down under a big tree and wait out the showers. Walked down a track on top of a steep finger ridge before diving off into the bushes to look at the gully bottom. Ended up putting up two sambar - both looked like yearlings though I only got a good look at the second but the first one honked me a couple of times.

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I was hoping to sit on the point of the finger ridge and glass the opposite face and/or gully bottom where it meets the main creek, but the trees were thicker than I remembered and there wasn't a lot of clear space to see so I doubled back and trekked up the other side of the ridge some way towards the car before deciding to hoof it back to the car and do a bit of road hunting and slowly drive out scanning for anything silly enough to be seen from the road. Turned out a good plan as I had just dropped off the top of the ridge and saw a group of goats hightailing it away from the road about 50m below me. Quickly parking the car I grabbed the gun and bag and raced off after them as quickly as I could through the dry leaves. Reaching the end of the little ridge I couldn't hear/see anything, so I decided to slowly make my way back up the side of the ridge and after only 20m or so, saw white shapes about 50m ahead - on!
The main mob of 10 or so were slowly feeding towards me, then just as the were about to get into a shooting lane, the all stopped and lay down or kept feeding in one spot. About 10m below them were a pair of young nannies, but I didn't have a good shot through the brush so edged my way closer. I slid my earbuds in and was just lining everything up, when a gust of wind behind me alerted the main mob and they all stood and slowly moved off. The two below me, turned and trotted off a few steps before stopping again. Through the trees I could see a clear shot on the bigger of the two nannies (couldn't see the other) and took the shot. As the mob bolted, the nanny turned and made it a few steps before crashing off out of view below me. Almost immediately the younger kid started bleating and I moved in but couldn't quite make out what was happening in the twilight of the evening - the white nanny was down without moving, but there was a smaller black head almost on top of it from my view. I figured that the black one was the nannies kid and was hanging around,but as I made my way down, I could see that the black one was a meter or two behind, and could hardly move - WTF?
Reaching the goats, I could finally see that the bullet had clearly passed through the white nanny and then blown through the stomach of the little black nanny standing behind, so I ended up finishing it off with the knife. Weird that they ended up a meter or two apart after falling 30m
Snagging a quick photo I whipped off the two back legs and one front shoulder in the last of the light before easing my aching legs back up the hill before the final scramble up the loose gravel of the road edge to the car before driving home again for a beer and a shower.

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2 for 1 deal!
I was also interested to try a new gut hook I'd bought - a box cutter!! It worked a treat and I was able to quickly unzip the whole length of the body to the sternum with ease and didn't even look like piercing the gut. This one takes 10sec to undo and change the blade in the field with a screwdriver, and as it's double sided you could get 4 fresh cuts without having to sharpen or change the blade and because it's plastic it weighs nothing. I don't know if it would do a big crusty mud covered boar or stag, but for goats, fallow and smaller bodies I'm sure it would do fine, and at $20 I'm not too fussed if I drop it and forget it
https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/diplomat-safety-parrot-knife-a31-lediploa31

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That's enough for a pulled goat dinner for the whole family over Christmas sometime!!