Thread: First time in the Blue Mountains

I was lucky enough to get the Rankleburn block in the Blue Mountains over the weekend. My son has been on at me for a while to take him out, so it had been a pretty long six weeks of “how many days now Dad!?” This was to be only my fourth trip out hunting, the first with me being “in charge”. So with my wealth of experience and my son’s wildly high expectations we set off..!

It’s only a couple of hours drive over there, so not bad at all. Within the hour I was having to listen to “are we nearly there yet?”. We found the beginning of Manuka Road and set off to where I thought the entrance to our block was, put the combination in that DOC had provided the day before – no good. Lock wouldn’t open – shit… Decided we’d try another access point and see if we could work our way round to the Rankleburn block, if we got through that gate ok. Next gate the combination worked, great, must be the right one. We drove around for about an hour trying to find our block – it was a nightmare and I was getting more and more frustrated. To make things worse we had limited petrol and every five minutes my son would chime in with something equally witty and annoying!

Eventually we found the right road and I was confident we were nearly there. Another ten minutes and we were at the end of the road where we’d be sleeping that night. Being able to sleep in the truck and hunt from it straight into the bush was a massive bonus. We decided we’d get everything sorted and go out for an evening hunt. The bush was pretty much as I had imagined it – pretty easy to get around, quite steep but manageable.

So off we went. I don’t know what other’s experiences are with taking their kids out – I’ve read a few tails lately on here but not sure whether my experience matches others… We walked to a decent spot where I figured we would wait for a while. We could see a good distance and there were a few bits of clearing. The very limited patience of an eight-year-old waned after only five minutes – “can we go now?”, “shall we look over there?”. I pretty quickly resigned myself to the fact that this was going to be an unsuccessful trip in terms of getting an animal, but being out there and having my son along was of more importance.

We moved about a few times – patience running thin on several occasions – until we got to what I thought was a good spot. I explained that would be our last place to hang around for this hunt, but if we gave it a little time we may get lucky. After maybe 15 minutes a deer appeared. It got on to us straight away and bolted – pretty cool to see though!

We had a couple of hunts the next day but not a lot happening. I could have sworn I heard a “stomp” but didn’t see anything – it was also at the time of some incessant talking so I may have been mistaken!

Driving out of there we got about 2 minutes up the road from the block we were hunting and spooked a deer which ran across the road into some pretty dense bush on the other side. We ended up leaving out of the first gate we tried which we couldn't get though... Cheap locks and having to withstand the elements probably make them a little temperamental...

Unsuccessful in terms of getting an animal for the freezer, but massively successful in terms of having a great time and being out there. Also successful seeing a couple of deer. Whoever had the block earlier in the week had some success as you can see in one of the pics below.

Can’t wait for the next one and thanks @Boaraxa for the tip on Garden Gully – will definitely be checking it out – just hope I get a bit of success in the ballot but I’ll be putting my name down for February!