What did you do today?

[bladeracer]

Whatever you're comfortable with mate, it's great we have a choice.
Interesting to always hear other people's justifications, we all have our standards were comfortable with.
Blokes in the area who do that stuff I know of, use 22 or 22 mag. Noise is always their reasons. 243, holy moly.
Me, I've used 22 forever, always solids, always front on and I'll never take a shot on a wound up animal. Always drop like a schoolbag hitting the ground when someone finds out there's hot chips at the tuckshop.
Is a 22 for everyone? No, and to keep the peace everyone can work out the reason why for themselves.

Last few, I've used 9mm, cos I've had it with me and I know it's on the money. Is it better? Instant death is dead.

I guess if I were dropping twenty cows the noise might add up to something, but for one or two shots it really is meaningless. Even the .243 is muffled to a degree by the closeness of the shot, barely noticeable when we're all concentrating on the shot itself. I doubt our neighbours heard a thing. The same butcher dropped four cows for him about five years ago with the .243 and we heard nothing - 380m away. We were taking the left overs for composting so were setting up a trailer for the butcher to drop the guts into, when we got there I was surprised to see they were already down. I used subsonic 7mm-08 a couple years ago because I had to do it inside a small steel dairy shed for a neighbour, and there were a few to drop. Subsonic is excellent in that situation, I think the .243 or .30-30 would've demanded hearing protection in there. I know first-hand that firing .223 inside a building without hearing protection is hell on the ears

Agreed about the 9mm, that or the .357 would've been my preference (I only have 500fps cast loads for the .44-40's though I would expect that to do just fine). Safely holstered until actually needed, and a near-contact shot will definitely do the job.

[bladeracer]

This thread got very quiet there for a bit

I've had a very busy time with Cowboy matches, shooting the Victorian state titles in early March at Little River. I shot it with all blackpowder, which meant I needed to load a lot of replacement ammo very quickly. I didn't manage to load 12ga as I ran short of black, and couldn't get more until Tuesday, April 7. I did a trip up to Hawthorn in the morning for blackpowder, then picked up targets from Beaconsfield PC on the way home. I didn't know that we wouldn't be shooting .30-30 at Adelaide so, instead of loading black 12ga. ammo, I wasted a couple days making, testing, zeroing and loading a batch of .30-30, which I left at home anyway. I would've only fired five rounds of .30-30 at Nowra in the long-range match, and we couldn't shoot rifles at Virginia (on the Cowboy ranges) anyway, so the .30-30 didn't matter. I had enough black .38 to do Nowra and Virginia for the rifle, and enough to do Nowra and half of Virginia for the pistols.

I went into the club early on Wednesday to shoot two pistol matches before hitting the road for Nowra at 1030. I stopped for fuel at Eden then continued up the coast. I had 60L in jerry cans to ensure I could get home from Nowra and Adelaide but didn't end up using it. The only place I saw any fuel issue was Eden where the place I stopped only had one working pump out of their four. Only 725km but an 8.5hr trip, arriving after dark, so I slept in the car outside the club. The caretaker came in and opened up before dawn but I didn't get out of the car until after 0700. Was on the phone with Rose when two Police cars came past me. I followed them in and discovered they were training on the pistol range for the day. I went further down to the Cowboy ranges to find the caretaker. Because the Cowboy is shot at the far end of the 800m rifle range, nothing could be set up beforehand. So I spent all of Thursday helping set up the range for the shoot. Had an awesome three days of competition with a bunch of fantastic people, and left at 1500 Sunday. I got fuel in Nowra then I went via Gunning to catch my brother, who wasn't there, so that was a wasted effort. Left Gunning at 1800, already dark. Had a big scare at 1950 38km north of Cooma when a big deer walked across the road in front of me, no idea how I missed him. I slowed down and got fuel at Cooma with an idea of sleeping there, but the fuel guy was less than helpful when I asked if there was somewhere I could sleep for a few hours so I got back on the road. Passed a big roo standing on the side of the road just after Bombala so I slowed down a little more. 21km north of Cann River I found a tree down across the road. Luckily, a semi had come through on the other side and sheared the tree off at the road centreline. I washed off as much speed as could before swerving into the right lane and just missed the tree, it would've really messed up my little car. I did a U-turn and went back to drag it off the road before continuing, there were lots of smaller branches littering the road from Bombala past Cann River due to winds. It was also drizzling from Bombala to Cann River. At this point I was only doing 80kph-ish so I decided to stop at Orbost for a sleep at 0040. You start off and it's an hour to the next town, but you get a scare and slow a bit, check ten minutes later and its still an hour. You get another scare and slow a bit more, check ten minutes later, and it's still an hour, and so on - it feels like you're going nowhere

Up at dawn and back on the road getting home at 0900 - a 1560km round trip. Had a shower and a sleep then up to empty the car and get into town for a club committee meeting. I had hoped I might load some blackpowder 12ga and .44-40 on Tuesday but opted to run Rose's mum into town for an appointment, then came home and repacked the car. Hit the road at 0800 Wednesday morning hoping to arrive in daylight, but I was nearly an hour late of that. I stopped for fuel at Horsham, carried on to Murray Bridge, where I headed for Gawler to skip the city. After eleven hours of driving I arrived at Virginia and crawled into the back for a sleep outside the gates. Up at 0700, drove into the Cowboy ranges, had a quick feed, then went for a wander around the facility since nobody else was there yet. I found some guys getting set up for some RAAF Air Defense guys coming in to shoot clays as part of their anti-drone work. By the time I wandered back to the Cowboy ranges there were a couple of caravans setting up. I found the match director and he took me on tour of their set up, which is pretty impressive. Everything was all ready to go so I did very little on Thursday, outside of exploring the various ranges and chatting with people, and crawled back into the car at dusk for a good sleep. Spent three days shooting with another awesome bunch of people and left there at 1400 on Sunday. I was following the Women's Circuit Racing World Championship and caught race one from Assen live on Saturday evening. I figured on stopping at Horsham for fuel and a feed while watching race two on Sunday evening, but got there late. So I refueled and carried on home, arriving at 0200, an 11.5hr drive. Locked the firearms up and crawled straight into bed. 1970km round trip.

It's been a very busy fortnight

I did a blood test the day before leaving for Nowra, and saw the doctor today for the results of the lead test - 25.1, so down a few points over last month (28.2) and only slightly lower than the January test (25.8), but at least it's going in the right direction now. Saturday is the ANZAC shoot at Little River, and I have a local Cowboy match on Sunday. After that I'm only shooting ISSF matches until Wodonga on May 9/10, so I'll do another blood test before I leave for that to see if the level has fallen at all. Hopefully I can get a pile of black ammo loaded up for Wodonga and the five-day NSW state titles in June at Bathurst.

I hope everybody else has just been having too much fun to post in here recently

[perentie]

Man, I am exhausted just reading this. What a busy life you have. Interesting though.

[Wapiti]

Yes, BR is pretty committed to shooting his matches and the inevitable bulk reloading! I'm jealous in a way, of the time and commitment he is able to give to having a great time doing what his passion is and getting around all over the country.

We got Tawney back, she (yep) was flapping her wings doing a preen and her wing broke off at where the main wing bone sticks out. It had mended sort of in that the ends of both sides of the bone had sealed and she was able to fold her wings up looking normally, but all that was holding it there was dried, dead skin. It was just hanging there. The carers got advice from the vet to bring her in and put her down, so they contacted us. The Mrs has done all the BS to get native carers permit or whatever it is, another cost and more money for governments that don't do anything except collect taxes.
So we said, we'll have her back and my wife cut the wing off after we looked at it and found it was not at all attached by blood vessels or nerves anymore, so it didn't hurt to remove it.
So Tawney rides around on my shoulder now whilst I'm making breakfast at the BBQ, and whilst I'm doing chores. She does her best pretending to be a stick when the gang of chooks rocks on past, and croaks at me when she wants some food. She gets in moods when I'm busy and throws her little stainless bowls off and out of her day cage when she feels ignored. She has almost concluded that she does a crash dive when trying to fly now, but still has a try now and again and I'll hear a THUMP on the timber floor in the farmhouse when she does a Stuka crashdive. She has decided to hate my wife and adores me, I wonder why because I was the bloke that cut her out of the barbed wire way back when and was the first human she ever saw, Weird.

We never had any meaningful rain here in Spring and Summer, in the Southern Downs in Qld, from Warwick west past Stanthorpe and Texas and way out to Cunnamulla, south down New England which is just on the border on our back boundary, and north to almost Chinchilla.
It is now a full blown drought, with groundwater in earth dams on most places dry. Neighbours are pulling stock out of the mud as they walk into the bottom of dams to try and get what water is left.
There has been a "Super El Nino" forecast to start and there will be no more rain to make the creeks run, grow any feed /grass and top up dams way into summer and some meteorologists (NOT the pathetic BOMM) are predicting no meaningful rain well into the end of '26 and into '27, and the paddocks where I haven't exclusion fenced yet are harbouring 100's of roos and are basically dust, Soon, they will start to all die, and I've been refused another cull permit because apparently the sick university-activist bureaucrats think they are "endangered" at the moment in numbers.
Well, if they don't get an instant lights out from a brain-box shot, they are all about to die a lingering death because of city activists that have never stepped foot in a paddock.
If I take a break from feeding or chasing water infrastructure and go for a ride around, all the animals that would normally be camped up and hidden like pigs and different roo breeds are all wandering around looking for water at all hours during the day. The kangaroos are still multiplying but will soon ditch their joeys as they do when things get desperate and I've never seen so many wallabies.

We got 60 ton of cotton seed delivered while everyone else dithers and tries to dream it's going to rain. But there is almost no feed, and if it does rain a bit, winter is about here and the frosts in drought will be severe and no grass grows here in winter. We will have temps in the early mornings here down to -10 degrees due to the south west winds and the clear skies here during droughts.
We were lucky to get the cottonseed, big transport companies are buying it all up and storing it in huge sheds, and waiting until the drought bites then they will re-sell it when there's none around for 2-3x the price it is now, and jack up the delivery and diesel costs. Good old parasites.
We also secured 1000 bales of wrapped forage sorghum, 500kg each, we get a lowloader delivery of 50 bales every Sunday but the big problem there is to get it from Gore, west of Warwick to here is now $1200 delivery each drop due to the diesel prices. We will soon be getting it in B-Double loads to maximise deliveries, but the extra trailer chews another $400 in diesel each run.
So any and all the money we've made from off-loading most of our cattle is gone, and all our savings over the last many years are gone now too. Oh well, no holidays coming up for a long time.
Nobody out here is planting, no subsoil moisture and no pumpable river water and fertiliser is unavailable or double the price and more. Seed suppliers have taken the initiative to hike seed prices too, and nobody wats to waste all that money when nothing will grow.
And that creature Bowen is still solar and wind power, and self-torching electric city carts will save us, and fu*k you farmers, you are onto us so we will kill you all off.
But Albo will save us, be burnt hundreds of tons of jet fuel so he and his rent-a-wife can jet all over Asia to secure us just ONE DAY more diesel.

Couple that with the constant city poachers with seemingly unending money for huge American status Rams and the latest shooting buggies looking for targets that can't get away between fences funnelled along our country roads, no hunters finding the time that we can trust to help us (everyone wants to hunt a deer, and doesn't want to cull our problem animals - fair enough I guess) because they all have their own lives to live 100's of km away, little fuel which I'm hoping but is convinced will soon be rationed so school-mums can take the kids to city ballet practice and sky-rocketing energy, and we have some challenging times ahead.

[bladeracer]

Man, I am exhausted just reading this. What a busy life you have. Interesting though.

I'm hitting it very hard while I can, but I don't expect to be able to afford to keep up this pace for too long, the cost in time and money is huge. I've been hoping I'd be able to fit in a shoot in Tassie this year but they haven't posted anything on the comp page https://acas.today/?page=comps&state=TAS yet. I discovered at Virginia that they do have their state titles penciled in for November 21/22 at Glenorchy, just north of Hobart. Rawhide is at Little River November 13-15 so it's tight but hopefully I can get down to Tassie as I've never been there. Ferry fee seems to be about $300 return which is cheap. Bit annoying that I have to drive 240km west to the ferry when Devonport is only 300km south of me but I might be able to go straight from Little River down to Geelong and spend a few days in Tassie before the shoot.

[wanneroo]

Sounds like Bladeracer is having fun shooting matches all over the place.

Wapiti, I heard the same thing, a Super El Nino is being set up for later this year and as I recall in El Nino, Australia usually has drought. But hopefully you get some rain this autumn and winter. I saw pictures from Tenterfield on Facebook, the leaves are turning up that way and look beautiful.

Here, last night it was -5C but the week before it was 25C during the day and spring is on the way. I'm ready, winter was long and I was home more than I usually am.

Super busy creating content for online, I work 7 days a week and the work has paid off. Youtube is my main public face for things, just surpassed 5000 subscribers. The success of all this is opening up many opportunities for creating content in so many areas and doing so many things. Next time I come to Australia, I'll be making videos every day and doing some cool stuff.

With shooting stuff, well, Olight sent me 3 different weapon lights so I did videos on all of that, so that was good to get out and do some shooting at night. I also learned to fly my drone at night so I could get some cool footage for those videos.

[perentie]

Yes, BR is pretty committed to shooting his matches and the inevitable bulk reloading! I'm jealous in a way, of the time and commitment he is able to give to having a great time doing what his passion is and getting around all over the country.

We got Tawney back, she (yep) was flapping her wings doing a preen and her wing broke off at where the main wing bone sticks out. It had mended sort of in that the ends of both sides of the bone had sealed and she was able to fold her wings up looking normally, but all that was holding it there was dried, dead skin. It was just hanging there. The carers got advice from the vet to bring her in and put her down, so they contacted us. The Mrs has done all the BS to get native carers permit or whatever it is, another cost and more money for governments that don't do anything except collect taxes.
So we said, we'll have her back and my wife cut the wing off after we looked at it and found it was not at all attached by blood vessels or nerves anymore, so it didn't hurt to remove it.
So Tawney rides around on my shoulder now whilst I'm making breakfast at the BBQ, and whilst I'm doing chores. She does her best pretending to be a stick when the gang of chooks rocks on past, and croaks at me when she wants some food. She gets in moods when I'm busy and throws her little stainless bowls off and out of her day cage when she feels ignored. She has almost concluded that she does a crash dive when trying to fly now, but still has a try now and again and I'll hear a THUMP on the timber floor in the farmhouse when she does a Stuka crashdive. She has decided to hate my wife and adores me, I wonder why because I was the bloke that cut her out of the barbed wire way back when and was the first human she ever saw, Weird.

I have been wondering how Tawney was getting on but afraid to ask. Pleased that she has settled in as well as can be expected..
Does your wife feed her? If you both feed her she should be friends with both but ours favoured my wife also.
Our pasture here is starting to brown off but still a bit of green pick available, but I dont have the problems you lot have. Its tough trying to make a living from the land just now and looks like getting tougher. My sympathies are for all of you
Keith

We never had any meaningful rain here in Spring and Summer, in the Southern Downs in Qld, from Warwick west past Stanthorpe and Texas and way out to Cunnamulla, south down New England which is just on the border on our back boundary, and north to almost Chinchilla.
It is now a full blown drought, with groundwater in earth dams on most places dry. Neighbours are pulling stock out of the mud as they walk into the bottom of dams to try and get what water is left.
There has been a "Super El Nino" forecast to start and there will be no more rain to make the creeks run, grow any feed /grass and top up dams way into summer and some meteorologists (NOT the pathetic BOMM) are predicting no meaningful rain well into the end of '26 and into '27, and the paddocks where I haven't exclusion fenced yet are harbouring 100's of roos and are basically dust, Soon, they will start to all die, and I've been refused another cull permit because apparently the sick university-activist bureaucrats think they are "endangered" at the moment in numbers.
Well, if they don't get an instant lights out from a brain-box shot, they are all about to die a lingering death because of city activists that have never stepped foot in a paddock.
If I take a break from feeding or chasing water infrastructure and go for a ride around, all the animals that would normally be camped up and hidden like pigs and different roo breeds are all wandering around looking for water at all hours during the day. The kangaroos are still multiplying but will soon ditch their joeys as they do when things get desperate and I've never seen so many wallabies.

We got 60 ton of cotton seed delivered while everyone else dithers and tries to dream it's going to rain. But there is almost no feed, and if it does rain a bit, winter is about here and the frosts in drought will be severe and no grass grows here in winter. We will have temps in the early mornings here down to -10 degrees due to the south west winds and the clear skies here during droughts.
We were lucky to get the cottonseed, big transport companies are buying it all up and storing it in huge sheds, and waiting until the drought bites then they will re-sell it when there's none around for 2-3x the price it is now, and jack up the delivery and diesel costs. Good old parasites.
We also secured 1000 bales of wrapped forage sorghum, 500kg each, we get a lowloader delivery of 50 bales every Sunday but the big problem there is to get it from Gore, west of Warwick to here is now $1200 delivery each drop due to the diesel prices. We will soon be getting it in B-Double loads to maximise deliveries, but the extra trailer chews another $400 in diesel each run.
So any and all the money we've made from off-loading most of our cattle is gone, and all our savings over the last many years are gone now too. Oh well, no holidays coming up for a long time.
Nobody out here is planting, no subsoil moisture and no pumpable river water and fertiliser is unavailable or double the price and more. Seed suppliers have taken the initiative to hike seed prices too, and nobody wats to waste all that money when nothing will grow.
And that creature Bowen is still solar and wind power, and self-torching electric city carts will save us, and fu*k you farmers, you are onto us so we will kill you all off.
But Albo will save us, be burnt hundreds of tons of jet fuel so he and his rent-a-wife can jet all over Asia to secure us just ONE DAY more diesel.

Couple that with the constant city poachers with seemingly unending money for huge American status Rams and the latest shooting buggies looking for targets that can't get away between fences funnelled along our country roads, no hunters finding the time that we can trust to help us (everyone wants to hunt a deer, and doesn't want to cull our problem animals - fair enough I guess) because they all have their own lives to live 100's of km away, little fuel which I'm hoping but is convinced will soon be rationed so school-mums can take the kids to city ballet practice and sky-rocketing energy, and we have some challenging times ahead.

[perentie]

Sorry I stuffed that up. I only meant to copy and paste the first bit but somehow my reply ended up in the middle of the whole thing. Not cut out for this stuff. I will pull my head in.

[Wapiti]

Sorry I stuffed that up. I only meant to copy and paste the first bit but somehow my reply ended up in the middle of the whole thing. Not cut out for this stuff. I will pull my head in.

I have been wondering how Tawney was getting on but afraid to ask. Pleased that she has settled in as well as can be expected..
Does your wife feed her? If you both feed her she should be friends with both but ours favoured my wife also.
Our pasture here is starting to brown off but still a bit of green pick available, but I dont have the problems you lot have. Its tough trying to make a living from the land just now and looks like getting tougher. My sympathies are for all of you
Keith

G'day Keith! Hope you are well mate and getting that new gun you were thinking about.
Actually, I saw Cleavers had a few of those AIA 10-shot .308 copies of the Lee-Enfields, I think from memory there was an example of every different model they made 20 years or so ago, brand new. And a heap of magazines for sale too separately.
What a blast they'd be to shoot.

yep, a "Super El-Nono is coming alright. Sh*t is about to hit the fan and you people better start expecting your food costs to start skyrocketing, in fact I suspect many things may be in short supply.
We are stocking up feed and supplies as fast as we can get trucks out, because that total loser f**kwit Albanese may just start fuel rationing, and I bet that city activist turd does it to farmers and keeps the ballet city runs going just fine.
I hope the economists and world political experts are wrong in expecting him to f**k everything up even more.

Yeas, Shelly does feed Tawney, and she probably does it better than me. But she's in town during the week at a real job and only here on weekends so I am the bloke that keeps the bird from starving. We dip anything she gets in that "Insectivore" mix so she gets all the grit, vitamins and stuff she needs. Mince, thin strips of beef, venison or skips cut like worms, chicken hearts, all that stuff.
But Saturday night, Tawney was doing the bull-ride ride around the house on her shoulder, and decided to do a high jump off, without the parachute and hit the floor. Bang.
She picked her up, and she went off. Squark, Squark, Squark, going apeshit and turned into a wild-eyed little demon.
So Shelly sat down on the lounge, with Tawney on her lap. The bird went nuts, trying to run up her t-shirt and attack her face, and despite trying to stop the crazy thing, the bird got between her hands and ran up and bit her face a few times on the nose and cheek. One bite got that hooked beak deep in her cheek, and I just had time to grab the mental bird and put it back on the log on his perch.
So much for appreciation.
So Tawney was banned from handling and was put in the cage overnight.
Then in the morning, she was right as rain. Both the bird and my wife.
Each morning and night when she is away at the other joint, we have a Facetime video in the morning and night, to keep up with what's going on, and I suspect, for het to make sure I haven't killed myself out here doing everything alone. Now, the bird goes ballistic when she hears my wife's voice, and doesn't stop until the call is finished.
I don't know what the hell happened, but the bird has taken it personally.
As far as I am accepted though, no dramas. She sits on my shoulder and rubs in my short hair and quietly clucks away. Not sure what's going on there.

[Flyonline]

Haven't been out much lately, what with the harvest and trying to get a few jobs done at home I've only managed a few short evening waits under my belt. That changed today when I headed out for a day in the bush. Plan A was to hit the ridge for a bit of a glass where I can see across into goat country and often spot them in the sun, Plan B if nothing was obvious was to drive round and park halfway up the hill further along the same range and hike into the tops of some gullies where I suspect the goats have been hanging out as they are no longer driven down the the dams/creek bottoms to get water. Plan C was go chase some deer if neither A or B were workable...

With the freezer emptied of goat earlier in the week, anything was on the cards though a couple of tasty young nannies were of preference. Loading up the car, I headed off and stopped for a quick glass. Almost immediately I picked up a white dot with the naked eye and confirmed one and then finally three goats in an open patch of slate scree on the other side of the big gully. Jumping back into the car, I swung around, parked and loaded up with high hopes of giving the pack it's first proper carry out. On the way in, I passed through a small side gully before hitting the main slope proper and managed to spook a black cat which hurried off without stopping to say hi

Working into the tops of the little folds that this large face has, I picked up some fresh droppings and one lone bleat. I'd deliberately come in high as I was not totally convinced the winds would be always in my favour, but I needn't have worried as they never switched the whole time I was there. Finally reaching the main gut I was able to glass up a pair of goats some way below me, so I zig-zagged down the mini finger ridge.The recent rains had softened everything up so conditions were almost ideal, but I had forgotten how loose everything is. In many places it feels like the whole slope is a poor step away from sliding into the creek below. After about 20min of careful stalking I reached where I expected to pick them up again, but was unable to see anything more. I was careful to keep moving slowly and scanning all around and below me, and a good thing as I picked out a nanny in the wattles below that I could easily have missed and blown my chances. Pivoting slightly, I started to move into a position on the top of the ridge that would give me a good arc of fire across the slope on the other side, as well as down into the gut and towards the creek I could hear tumbling over the bedrock in the shade of the steep hillside opposite.

Scanning with the binos, I managed to find a young black goat, so following the goat hunters creed of 'leave the white and shoot the black' I zeroed in on the new target and slowly slid into a position that looked to give me a favourable shot of about 50m. After a bit of munching, the goat took a few steps and paused in the sun giving me a clear shot of the front half, so sliding a round home I settled the rifle on the sticks and took aim and fired.

The goat took a couple of quick steps and stood swaying back and forth like it was going to tip over any second, so when a billy hobbled into view and paused facing me, I slid a second round home and took a shot facing dead on at which he fell backwards and rolled over down the hill.

IMG_6581.jpeg (523.1 KiB) Viewed 31 times

Weirdly I forgot to take a photo of the other two, though I could have dragged them together for a shot

At the second shot, the black goat turned, took a few steps and slid to the ground and 4 more goats I'd not seen in the gut sprang up and stopped facing me at about 30m, one of which was a very nice young healthy fat looking nanny.

What's a bloke to do in these circumstances? One stinky billy down, along with another eater (wasn't completely sure if the black goat was a nanny or young billy) and a nice eater offering a broadside shot only a short distance away? Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth I slid a 3rd round and without moving an inch, shot the 3rd goat in about 45 seconds.

The other three were another nice nanny and a pair of billies who trotted off when I stood up and grabbed the bag, rifle and sticks to head down to the still forms below me - the fun was about to begin (after lunch though!).

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I've had worse lunchroom views

This was also the first test for an idea I'd seen from Tony Gillingham - using a pot-plant hanger to skin the legs which worked brilliantly, so much easier than fumbling on a log or rock bent over.

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Loading up the One Planet Vertex for the first time, I felt like the line from Pink Floyd's Learning to Fly "I'm laden, empty and turned for home" This was also almost exactly the same spot I'd shot a pair of nannies two years ago almost to the day, so I knew what was coming - almost 200m of elevation to gain in 450m

Reaching the car I dropped the pack glad to get to the end of the haul out. So far I've been incredibly impressed with it, this only made me even more impressed and look forward to giving it a seriously hard work out i.e. full Sambar leg at some stage soon.

IMG_6584.jpeg (416.15 KiB) Viewed 31 times

Black cats crossing your path ARE unlucky - just not for me this time!!

[perentie]

Good story. Thanks.

[Wapiti]

Not really much of a story, but something that might give others who live where there are streetlights some food for thought.

There's been a bit of shooting by the neighbours the last few weeks, and no I'm not talking about the visitors to the area on their R&R and holidays, on someone else's place. The people that own the places, running the stock and trying to make a living still.
El-Nino hasn't yet been declared, but already here the dams are almost dry, most are, the feed has run out, people are selling their stock whilst they still can after deciding which of their best breeders that they've bred up at great expense as their best stock they can still, hopefully, afford to keep. And feed with brought-in feed.
Trucks have been in and out, taking best breeders to better pastures a 1000km away for agistment.
Hay of all kinds has, in a matter of weeks has doubled in price, soon to have tripled. Cotton seed that was $450/tonne two months ago delivered is now $6-700 plus trucking, and all but run out.
We've bought in about 75 bales of forage sorghum silage bales for farmers out here who are friends who might need them that have shown me respect in the past, and secured 1000 in total, at mates rates prices. A huge cost, and a giant halt to all our future plans, but there you go. Yesterday I dropped off a bale to some ex-soldier neighbours doing it tough as a gift and told them there is more if they need it.
Things are about to fall over and many people will not make it either. People always complain about the little crap.

Anyway, the shooting. Everyone is out culling all the wallabies, wallaroos and greys. We all know what will happen to them during the minus 0' winters we get out here, during droughts... -10' is not strange. These animals will die from malnutrition because they will not be able to stay warm, and if they make it, the early summer drought ticks will cover their backs and they will die from anaemia.
These blokes have to work all day, then when it gets dark, drive around culling animals that are eating all their last feed, and will only die anyway.
I was stopped on the road by a neighbour, and asked, what about all those "hunters" on your place lately, don't they keep the excess roos down for you? Oh they don't do that, she said, they only want to "hunt", stalk deer or look for the biggest pigs. They say they don't have the ammo money to help us with that. They can barely afford the fuel. That's strange, I said, they all have new Hilux's and shiny new SxS on tipping trailers, latest guns etc. Yes, she said, they have no money left over after getting all that gear, they can't help us out. Things are tough.
What bullsh*t. Sick of hearing the whinging. Now that's a story I know all too well. Finding people, you can trust first, that you might know for a while, to let loose on your place is quiet a scary process. Then there are the legal liabilities the farmers risks on himself and everything he'd built. And no, your SSAA or SU liability insurance does not indemnify the farmer from even the most hopeless no win - no fee lawyer. You know, the hunters that the SSAA says are a huge part of the answer to Australia's farmers' problems. They either can't come out when you need them, even slightly regularly, or want only the cream animals to hunt. But I get that, and before anyone reading this gets the sh*ts, just stop for a minute and see this from the other side, just take the time for a minute to think about the other side.
It's not the hunters' fault, it's what has happened to this country. The good people can't afford to come out here, and the ratbags, the oxygen thieves that con and steal, somehow they have no problem shooting over others fences.

Right now, the wild pigs are very hungry. For now, they are doing us a favour by cleaning up the stinking mess left from us having to sort all this out. But it will be their turn soon enough.
How is this "What did you do today" worthy? Well we sat down outside till it got dark over a gin, after coming back to the house, discussing how f**ked up this whole bullsh*t thing is.

Edit for the snot spelling