Thread: 13 mile bush

Keep looking Charlie,theres a few pigs and deer in the area.

Good on ya Charlie, good luck next time

Charlie, last time I went for a walk in that area there was evidence guys have been accessing the back of Thirteen Mile Bush off the Lake Lyndon road using 2 wheeled motorbikes. They had been going up the ridge just south of Rabbit Hill. You may find the area they can get to off that ridge has had a bit more hunting pressure than others if it is easier for them to get to.

Nice work Charlie, saw this thread a little late.
I was up there early last year and there were a couple of deer in there that got my attention and somewhat closer to than you would have thought to the access points, we walked in from the top of Porters Pass.

We also bumped into other hunters on another trip so no doubt the area has a bit of pressure.

For me seeing them it was a case of slowing well down and just looking, that's me though I was and am pretty eager to keep on walking.

awesome , so I've invested in some cheap but new gum boots as there a lot of water crossings and I'm heading back up this saturday unless it keeps raining like this :/. Fingers crossed ill get some dinner in the meantime ill keep soaking up your info guys, really good stuff!

another day up the bush today and spotted two bigger pigs an followed some red prints for a while right near the entrance , so its been a pretty good day but a hard climb. if i continue on sh73 to lake lyndon, can i just hunt from the mountains there, it seems the majority of the land is ok to hunt but lyndon side would give much easier access to the higher peaks i think the starting elevation is 850 where its taking me 2 hours to walk to 850m at the moment.

I wouldn’t be too worried about the altitude as the deer are after new grass at the moment, and the spring grass growth hasn’t got all that high yet.

My son and I were sitting overlooking a gully at about 900m last Thursday night, not too far from where you are looking. There was new grass, but only in the gully. 3 deer literally trotted out of the Bush about 100m away from us and made a beeline towards the bottom of the gully to feast on the new grass.

In their haste they didn’t notice us sitting in the scrub on the opposite face. Two of them are now in my freezer.

good on you mate! awesome news of success stories over this end and keeping yourself in the food. ill take a drive over that way next time and eye it up, i feel i just struggle in the denseness of the trees from the bender station access until you get passed the hut, hard to see anything i sense it knows your there well before.

I had a look at a map and we were more like 750 metres, not that it really matters.

I am sure you are right - more than likely a lot more deer see us than we see, but the more you look around the more you will be able to judge where you are likely to see them. I would hazard a guess that 10% of the guys on here see 90% of the deer because they know where the deer are likely to be.

We have been really lucky in that early on in my son’s hunting life we stumbled on an area with a lot of deer (not where we were on Thursday) but even in that big valley we really only see deer in the same few areas time after time. Your challenge is to find that spot in the area you are hunting.

A lot of guys want to cover as much ground as possible hoping to stumble on a deer, and good on them if it works for them - when I was younger I certainly did this too.

Nowadays I prefer to find a likely spot and just sit and observe, looking around with the bino’s. Often I see deer that are too far away, but you can learn a lot by sitting and watching them. On Thursday we had been sitting there for an hour and a half before the deer came out, and it was still an hour till dusk. I was beginning to think we weren’t going to see anything, then suddenly there they were.

I have found sometimes you can’t see for looking. One night in this same spot we had been sitting there for at least 30 minutes before I noticed a pig on the hillside opposite us. When I really looked I counted 8 pigs on the hillside, all within 100 metres of us. I hoped like hell my son wasn’t going to shoot the biggest one as we were a 3 hour walk from the car.

Another evening I had been watching this gully for about an hour when all of a sudden there was a deer standing out in the open a long way from any cover. It must have been lying down all that time and just stood up.

I guess what I am saying is that we probably wouldn’t have seen any of these animals if we had just kept walking with only a brief look around.

Originally Posted by Sauer

I had a look at a map and we were more like 750 metres, not that it really matters.

I am sure you are right - more than likely a lot more deer see us than we see, but the more you look around the more you will be able to judge where you are likely to see them. I would hazard a guess that 10% of the guys on here see 90% of the deer because they know where the deer are likely to be.

We have been really lucky in that early on in my son’s hunting life we stumbled on an area with a lot of deer (not where we were on Thursday) but even in that big valley we really only see deer in the same few areas time after time. Your challenge is to find that spot in the area you are hunting.

A lot of guys want to cover as much ground as possible hoping to stumble on a deer, and good on them if it works for them - when I was younger I certainly did this too.

Nowadays I prefer to find a likely spot and just sit and observe, looking around with the bino’s. Often I see deer that are too far away, but you can learn a lot by sitting and watching them. On Thursday we had been sitting there for an hour and a half before the deer came out, and it was still an hour till dusk. I was beginning to think we weren’t going to see anything, then suddenly there they were.

I have found sometimes you can’t see for looking. One night in this same spot we had been sitting there for at least 30 minutes before I noticed a pig on the hillside opposite us. When I really looked I counted 8 pigs on the hillside, all within 100 metres of us. I hoped like hell my son wasn’t going to shoot the biggest one as we were a 3 hour walk from the car.

Another evening I had been watching this gully for about an hour when all of a sudden there was a deer standing out in the open a long way from any cover. It must have been lying down all that time and just stood up.

I guess what I am saying is that we probably wouldn’t have seen any of these animals if we had just kept walking with only a brief look around.

Yep. Walk a little, look a lot.

yeh cheers guys , its so easy to go in with so much enthusiasm and just trying to get to the furthest spot , i feel like actually if i just stayed put at the open access point and hung out for the day nice and quietly things could go my way, but you know how it is, this is all the fun of the game. Couldn't think of a better way to spend a day anyway.

Let the binos do the walking.You do the shooting.

hi mate, enjoying your adventures, keep us posted ! its awesome to see younger crew heading out solo and learning as they go