What did you do today?

[Wapiti]

There's some there already, but they are made from standard 250MS plate. I put them there for kids to shoot rimfires at, little pig effigies on chains and small round swingers, but when people shoot centrefires at them they get damaged. There is a 40mm thick swinger plate, 400 x 500 at 100yds, that has copped a caning but as long as the chains aren't hit that'll survive.
New ones will allow smaller ones to be put up to test your hunting accuracy, like up the hill above the high rock walls there cut by the creek, 4, 6 and 8" gongs to see if your hunting accuracy, off your two legs against a tree or whatever, is up to going hunting.
And a target frame to check zero at 50 and 100, things get bumped don't they.
That'll compliment the two-person double-sided steel benchrest that's already there.

[Wapiti]

Got out in the welding truck to do what I could inbetween rain squalls and get some more bracing cut and welded as much as I can. Even if I get just enough done to allow all the sight wires to be strained so some mates can help and get the 2400 long Gio posts in the ground while I finish the welding.
Looks like some more rain up to and over the weekend too.
If it rains I will just blade and stick-rake all the dead timber in a nice and wide windrow into piles each side of the new fencing. haven't done that either. It's great habitat for the large Cunninghams skinks, Eastern Blue-Togues and Shinglebacks. They love these hollow logs. So I can't crush the logs up. Might have to pick all the likely ones up with forks first.

But it was one of those unreal days we get in the higher regions of the Granite belt - the big dark clouds under the level of the higher rain black clouds fly over so fast, it's just great to watch. I could see the rain squalls coming so we'd cover the generator and mig and pile into the cab to sit them out, my two mates (Rowdy and Dusty) listening to the loud taps of the big raindrops.
The wind was rocking my mig gun hand, had to brace on the SHS and 114 cattle rail I was welding. Good old flux-core wire, the occasional rain drops and the howling wind would've made using a normal gas-mig completely useless. As would've the galvanised steel.

No shooting today, even though it was plainly obvious the pigs were out cruising the grasslands and mooching around the logs. We watched them from inside the cab, at least a km away across the creek near the camp. No, two k's. I wonder if they've found the offcuts and offal from the 4 deer and two goats the weekend hunters took for meat? I bet they have.
How good is that?

[Wapiti]

Sitting here out the back, overlooking the bird feeder near the little house yard dam. It's lightly raining.
Got the 17HMR set up to pop the Indian Mynas that are trying to move in here.
Loaded with Remington 17gn gold-tipped poppers.
We did the same yesterday arvo, missus and I over a cup of tea. The chickens love it, they race out and tear off with the bodies, pull them to bits.
Great fun.

[bladeracer]

I hadn't thought to leave the miners for the chooks, great idea

We're waiting on calves. We pulled the first on Friday. Her last two have both been breached, the last one took three hours for the vet to remove and we got her a poddy to replace it. With about ten days to go she was looking uncomfortable, and was making milk. So Rose went in for a feel. It was the right way around so we decided to pull it early. It came easily enough and is doing fine.

Then I went to town to get supplies for the trip, packed the car and went to bed. Drove eleven hours on Saturday for the national Cowboy titles in SA, in Virginia, north of Adelaide. Some others arrived late yesterday and caravans have been piling up around me since then.

One of the guys handed me a belt buckle, apparently I was third in something at Chisholm Trail a couple weeks ago

Today is just Range Officer courses and some Cowboy training sessions. Tomorrow we're shooting some long-range events out to 200m on the handgun silhouette range, followed by some 5-stand clay bird busting to get us warmed up.

[Wapiti]

Mate I reckon you should be fined for lead pollution of the countryside - how many tons have you shot into the dirt?
Good on you mate.

On the Minors, I got a few of the buggers. When the 17 goes off, the chooks tear off across the yard at 1000mph towards the feeder area in that funny way they do... wings half out and tripping over their own feet. Hilarious.

Then I dropped the bloomin Ruger upside down on the scope on the concrete. How the aluminium flip-up covers didn't snap off is a miracle. I'll have to check the zero isn't off tomorrow before I throw those tiny gold-tipped rice grains at another feral bird.
Sh*t happens when you are doing stuff eh. No dramas.

[Wapiti]

We had a delivery from Elders today, pallets of 240cm pickets, barb and plain wire. The rep I dealt with is new to the job, so he came out with their truck driver to meet us. What's the big deal well, they both saw Ghost the wapiti bull who's down near the house yard with the calving cows, and his little mate for company the red deer Rip.
Ghosts antlers are spectacular and he's a huge animal, and the rep Chris went nuts.
Turns out he's a dead-set crazy deer hunter, he regularly saves up and goes to Wanaka in Otago, where we have friends at Minaret who is owned by Tim Wallace, the bloke who pioneered the deer industry in NZ.
He busts his guts to get a ballot block up over the hill to a spot near Mt Aspiring, with a mate who lives in Wanaka. Anyway he's hard-core, they get dropped off by Alpine Helicopters (owned by Wallace) with all their gear for a week and just set up base-camps and hunt. His mate keeps the meat.
So an 8am drop-off turned into 12pm gab-fest and the only thing that pulled it up was a big roll cloud and a downpour.
You never know when you are going to meet a real hunter who, even for a middle-aged bloke, keeps fit and loves to hunt.
I think we're going to hit it off, and Elders can get us most of what we need.

[Wapiti]

Got time to go for a run before dark to check the floodgates were OK after that rain. The water has gone down into two runs under the gate now, but I could see big logs had gone under and the gate did it's job with no damage.

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All the large gravel wasn't there when I made the gate, it's come from up in the mountains in the back of our place and where the creek widens, it slows down and the rocks drop out of the water carrying them and build up. That wide Island in the middle is about a metre thick of gravel.
I will come down and bucket up a heap for dumping in soft mushy track crossings another time.

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The posts are drilled into the rock at least a metre and filled with concrete, there are two cables on big chains and turnbuckles to adjust, and the mesh between the two cables is 1800mm high, needs to stop deer jumping out. The 3mm poly below is 1500 high, it floats on to of flood water and no flood rubbish can catch in it like if you used mesh as some do - it just rips off, screw doing things over and over again. When the water drops, the heavy black poly drops down too with it as it goes down.
Anyway, no work needed again, Bonus.

[bigpete]

Saw the bank,saw the travel agent,talked to the hunt consultant, resorted my list of things to take over,researched where to get money changed into ZAR.....my head is spinning

[Wapiti]

Saw the bank,saw the travel agent,talked to the hunt consultant, resorted my list of things to take over,researched where to get money changed into ZAR.....my head is spinning

Mate, sounds awesome, I'm fuggen jealous!!!
If I ever get that lucky (and have the bloomin' time to get away from this lot) I know who's done the hard work sorting this all out.

[Wapiti]

Some animal pics for those stuck in offices or at home, for whatever the circumstances.
Hope youse all get to get away from the concrete gutters soon, fellas, and get some fresh air.
Gentle young Rip, having dropped his first 12-point spindly head and now his new one is sprouting. We wonder how it will look this time.
His first head, the one before, was a strange 3-4 set, and the 3 side was missing the trez tine - and if you took in the (mostly rubbish) info from the well-regarded ( ) deermasters on the forums he would've been called a "cull stag" and shot.
But his second head was a perfect 6/6, a royal at 3 years old. Oh the internet.

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And his mate, Ghost, the wapiti bull. He is 2/3rds through growing his new head, he dropped his last antlers early because he was being cut for velvet.
He has to grow the long throwbacks yet, you can see where those will soon be coming out. His antlers are growing at least 25mm a day, showing how much nutrition is essential for antler development, imagine the calcium and minerals required as well as the increased blood flow - growing antlers are a huge blood bank.

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When he stands normally, the tips of his antlers now are at least 2m tall, just a massive deer species. Dwarfs the reds, and markedly bigger than sambar.
Just something different on this Wednesday morning.

[perentie]

Good pics. You are getting a nice bit of green coming up too.

Keith

[Wapiti]

Yes Keith, 160mm this month so far.
Prior to that, the place looked like grass didn't exist. All the dams are full again, they were just mud puddles, or completely dry. Thank goodness for bores.
It will take months for feed to grow though.
But Spring is the best time to get deep subsoil moisture.

[Wapiti]

Finally finished the terrible job of high exclusion fencing for some more breeding paddocks with the help of some mates from farms down the road a ways.
Initially to give the calving cows some more forest country to muck about in, and also the outside run of a new section of probably 400 acres that will be broken up into 6 smaller paddocks for better deer breeding. For both Reds and Wapiti. This will allow me to experiment with Hybrids as well, Elk over Reds where the Dam is from 20+ point stags, and the Sire is a full blood Montana Bull. All accessible from one another and all opening into a long laneway from both sides to bring them into yards. Just about killed me.
Next week I'm getting a new chassis replacement for a good bit of my back, so I will have no excuse to be pottering around the sheds and getting all those Woodleighs into cases full of slow-burning ADI powders to test out, AND that bastard boar is still gigging up all the tree roots where my new fences go through the country he's living in. An excuse to get out the 300 TRG and sit and wait for the bugger on the hill above. If he's digging up tree roots, yep he will pull up on a bait.
I was going to leave him to the hunters that come on, but enough's enough, he's outsmarted them a few times and I'm over it.

[Fester]

I was looking at the pics of the big Elk, got some character that one, I wouldn't get caught in a pen yard during the roar.
High fencing must be a hell of a job, the never-ending job of fence repairs must be the farmers' worst ongoing duties, not that I know much about the other never-ending jobs.

The small farm I have been shooting on tried to high-fence the bush border, but the roos just wrecked it.

[bigpete]

Did the same thing I do every day....plot to take over the world!

[bladeracer]

Finally found time to load some ammo today!

From when I left for Qld on September 23 until I got home from Mildura on Monday night, I spent 31 days living in my car with 21 days of shooting, clocking 10,000km in six weeks. The few days I had at home in between the shoots were loading ammo and farm stuff, including pulling a calf the day before heading to Adelaide. I'm thoroughly exhausted, but wow, it's been a blast

I have three more Cowboy shoots for the year - this weekend is Rawhide at Little River, the following Sunday is a match at my local club in Warragul, then I catch the ferry on the 26th for the Tassie state titles, getting home on the first of December. We'll have a Cowboy Christmas shoot two weeks after that but I'm not counting that as a match.

I really want to shoot Rawhide with blackpowder but I don't see me having time to load black for it. So I loaded 250rds of smokeless .38 Special and 123rds of .30-30 today. Still have to do a few hundred .45ACP and a few hundred smokeless .44-40 for the pistols. If I do manage to find some free time during the week I'll do a batch of black 12 gauge, .44-40 and .38. I'm undecided whether I want to take ammo to Tassie or just buy factory ammo there. The ferry has a 250rd or 5kg limit, but I can apply for more on grounds of shooting a big match. Really just a matter of finding time to do the paperwork.

Broke the firing pin in the .22 Henry at Mildura so I need to chase up a new one. I'll take my son-in-law's Mossberg .22 lever to Rawhide.

Wound up in Shep hospital on the way home from Qld and had a phone consult with a neurologist yesterday morning as a result. I have some stuff going on that they can't nail down so we're thinking it's coming from the high lead levels. Have to do another lead test a few weeks after Tassie when my level should be low, hopefully it might drop under 20.

[Wapiti]

I was looking at the pics of the big Elk, got some character that one, I wouldn't get caught in a pen yard during the roar.
High fencing must be a hell of a job, the never-ending job of fence repairs must be the farmers' worst ongoing duties, not that I know much about the other never-ending jobs.

The small farm I have been shooting on tried to high-fence the bush border, but the roos just wrecked it.

It would have everything to do with the design of the fence, and the quality of the wire mesh. Or probably both.
Cheap fences get wrecked, so cheap is not cheap at all.

The One Steel Waratah mesh we use is the Stockgrip, every knot is of the "tuffknot" type, and unlike others, all the vertical pickets are as high tensile as the horizontal strainers. It costs more, probably 25% more than the next brand of the same type, but as you say once it's been wrecked, cheaper is dumber, as it gets destroyed if it's soft, inadequate type for the animal pressure and too low.

All the boundaries have the 300mm apron built-in, which is sprung-loaded against the ground and goes on the outside. Pigs cannot lift it. When the grass grows through it, it's impossible to lift. This is why, when you fence pigs in as is inevitable sometimes, they cannot get out and breed and cause havoc.
Like the big f**ker I'm still yet to go and sort out.

Any pro shooters here will know a 40kg (dressed, so around 60kg live) European Grey roo is extremely strong and will try and jump anything, our fences are 1800 high minimum and we often come upon a big roo like that, hanging in the fence. Never have they damaged it from hitting it flat out and then hanging in it and struggling all day.
If they are lucky I find them before they perish, and they perish then anyway. You cannot free them. Which is why I always carry a large set of Fiskars tree loppers. Snip, snip.
The ones I don't come across get eaten as they hang in the fence. Life is harsh.

[Fester]

Yeah, I suspect they are a bit strapped for cash, and the fence extension was never going to work.
They have some bodgey 3 way gates and stuff, also some bulls, nice quiet cattle though.
One of those big grey bucks is my next hunt target; big fkers may test the .223, but shot placement should be the answer.

I have seen the way pigs just push under normal fencing on forest farms; they seem to just laugh at meshing quick-fix repairs.
It must be the worst choice of land for farming, govt land management, eh, but can they manage anything?
Our growing pig problem was on tonight's ABC News; the minister's responses just made me laugh.

Good fence explanation; I don't think I have even seen proper deer and pig fencing.