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Dog of a day in the Blue mountains
A long wait on the phone to DOC first thing on Thursday morning secured me my favourite block in the Blue Mountains for the weekend, excellent!
Arriving in the pre-dawn darkness I quietly shouldered my pack and put the dog into heel before making my way down the track through the young pines into the block.
We spooked 3 deer in the young pines walking down the track, promising start. To say the dog was excited was an understatement.....
Got to the first clearing at first light, carefully moved into a position where I could see. A quick scan reviled 10-15 doe's grazing undisturbed. It looked like a deer farm! Another quick scan looking for anything with antlers, nothing to be seen. Slight dilemma, take one for the pot (nice and handy to the truck) or wait to see if a buck was hanging about. Decided a "bird in the hand" always wins! I have the rest of the day anyway to look for a buck.
I selected a nice plump looking doe, made sure dog was sitting behind me and squeezed off the shot. The doe reared up and disappeared over a bank, deer are running everywhere! Pip broke and ran towards the downed deer, I gave a low whistle not wanting to make too much more of a disturbance (a single suppressed shot doesn't seem to upset the deer too much). She ran on! bugger, I stood up and started walking over to where I hoped the deer was lying and I assumed a happy dog....
I reached where the deer had been standing and a broad blood trail led 5m down the bank to a very dead deer, but no dog! About then I heard frantic yipping, followed by crashing through the scrub as Pip obviously had decided she could do better than me and catch her own deer and was in hot pursuit, shit!!!! I yelled and whistled to no avail as the yipping got fainter and fainter. Thoughts of how far she'd chase them and loosing her came to mind, not good! There was also a distinct chance she would end up in the neighbouring block also sub-optimal....Shit!
Not too much I could do. I was mad at myself for allowing it to happen, I should have yelled at her as soon as she broke, idiot! I turned to the downed deer, may as well butcher it as i waited. I called and whistled as I dressed it out. Every deer in the Blue Mountains would know where we were now, bloody amateur. Halfway through butchering there is a rustle and a sheepish looking dog emerges from the scrub, panting heavily. I call her over and give her a pat, at least she came back, she can sense i'm livid though. She lies down out of harms way. No point disciplining her as the moment has passed, was my stuff up.
The deer hung up in a tree to cool, we make our way down to the creek. Plenty of fresh rutting activity is apparent in the open grass land. Looks like the fallow have made the most of the lack of pressure in the last few weeks.
We make our way into my favourite part of the block to look for a decent buck. Hopefully things have settled down in the couple of hours it takes us to make our way there. The stalking is frustratingly noisy with plenty of dry twigs on the ground making stealthy travel hard. We see half a dozen doe's and a rapidly fleeing spiker for our afternoon's effort, nothing worth shooting. We return to another clearing at last light to see if anything appears but the deer seem to have learnt their lesson unsurprisingly after the mornings debacle. We trudge up the hill in the rapidly settling frost to collect our deer from the morning as a buck starts to croak in the neighbouring block. His croaks clear in the crisp air. Still a bloody good day really and hopefully a lesson learned.
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