Teenagers... Hunting with my lad Iain
[This is the last chapter from our most recent trip which for various reasons - like being invaded by Afrikaners - didn't get written up for a while.]
A strange phenomenon that I have encountered several times since I got married, is the sense of my handbrake being applied from very far away. The handbrake remotely controlled by my wife. Even when she is 350km away and I’m off grid and off-line, I can feel it. She’s a great lass, and doesn’t reach for the virtual hand brake very often, but when she does… Click-click-click…
I got the click-click feeling, so I needed to check in. Off to the top of the hill to find some signal…
Ah yes, there’s a message to say, Hey, you need to come home early, because blah blah blah, blah blah blah… blah blah… and so that’s why and see you then. Bye!
Well fantastic. I returned to the cabin to consult my eldest son, who was staying with me for supposedly two weeks.
Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, I have a gig.
Forget to tell me?
Now fair’s fair, to a forgetful 17 year old musician, his first gig is a pretty significant event. Not something to just shrug off. And the fact that he would even consider spending 10 days with me, let alone almost two, hunting deer and riding bikes, is a major plus. A really big plus. When I was his age I ran and hid at the mere thought of hanging out with my parents for a single weekend. So I wasn’t about to complain about having to go home a few days early.
Righto mate, well we’d better get into it, eh.
Upon the departure of mother & brother, our first task was to reassign camp responsibilities. Sharing responsibilities is still an alien concept to my son, who would happily accept “fully catered” for as long as possible. After the usual robust negotiations ended with me threatening a consequence, he acquiesced. The cause of the intransigence was of course the come down from having no internet. I think us oldies misunderstand how hard it is for these kids to break the habit of reaching into their pocket for the smartphone. Anyway, duties were shared.
A sudden hot & humid day caught us unprepared. No other option but to go for an afternoon nap in the cool of the cabin. We were very surprised how late we woke up – bottom line is that the weekend with mother & brother had been pretty full on, and we paid for it. Deer o’clock was only an hour away, so scrambling to get ready happened. I hate having to rush as I always forget something.
On the way up the hill we scanned ahead for that rooting sow & suckers. No luck. I’d put a shot into the backstop just behind her a couple of days prior – to be fair she was on the run, I was sitting on the quad and about 200m away, only just missed – that was enough of a warning to that pig. Pig, don’t come down to the flats, bad things can happen.
The plan was simple. Work around the perimeter of the hunting area downwind and as far away as possible. We walked a familiar path through the bush on a well-used game trail to a point at which we could gain some elevation over the cleared pasture. As we entered the paddock, we dropped to a crawl towards some tussock cover on a slight rise.
This position has over a 280° view, with bush edge up to about 325m max range. Primo spot. Most deer I’ve shot here have been around 250m. The wife shot a big as stag here a couple of years ago. We sat for a while, intermittently glassing and whisper chatting. I could tell my son’s attention deficit was starting to create trouble, so I suggested that maybe one us should crawl over to look at the 60° of country we couldn’t see.
Because my fit as but lazy son was lying horizontal, watching the clouds, I went.
The brow was about 60m away, hiding a good spot on the bushline that was basically a game trailhead, mostly used by fallow but also the occasional red. About ¾ the way there I got fed up trying to slither through the grass, so crouched and slowly stood up… and then sat down hard again. A red yearling was right there, no more than 50m away, facing away. I gestured at my hunting partner, who didn’t see my gesturing because he was still looking at the clouds. The wind was in our favour, but I daren’t try and call him over with the rifle, so I had to go back.
And when I got there, Private Twerp was taking photos of clouds with his iPhone.
(There’s usually several times every day that phone is threatened with an unscheduled flight into the nearest waterbody. Just the look on my face told him that the phone’s departure time was imminent.)
Righto Dad.
A plan was hatched. I was worried about bumping the deer as I had no idea which way it was going to browse. It could come straight towards us. So we backtracked and went round the bush edge to put a wee bit of distance between us and the deer. Slithering out from the cover, we ghosted onto the top of a brow and looked straight down onto the daft animal, about 120m away. A round was loaded, instructions were issued. The lad knew what to do. So he did it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgNj...P_0MHqz6nw9o7X
It wasn’t a “she”, it was a “he”. We got down to business, whereupon I realised I’d forgotten the meat bags. So we removed the hindquarters skin on, and put the backstraps inside my teeshirt. See, I knew I’d forget something. Nevertheless, an excellent result!
https://i.vgy.me/KzQbhh.jpg
Smiling is clearly very uncool for 17 year olds.
The following day we decided to go and clean out a mob of goats that we’d been seeing from the flats in roughly the same place for a few days now. This was a good chance for Iain to get some more decent .308 Winchester experience, both the Tikka and the Browning BLR. Goats are great for this, because they’re out all day and easy to find. The first mission was to get above the mob, so walked up to the top of the spur and up onto the ridgeline from the other side. Perfect, right on top of them, about 200m away. Iain set himself up and dumped the whole mag – only one goat required two shots to anchor it, so five goats down for six shots, and a hot DPT suppressor. Good job lad. Tumbling goats.
https://i.vgy.me/pHj2Fp.jpg
Next up was a classic bit of close in stalking. I gave him the BLR and we went to find some goats on the other side of the native. Again, not hard to find! The only problem was that in order to get a decent number in one go (i.e. five, the target, as the rifles holds 4+1), Iain would need to get around some scrub and really close, and be prepared to take five rapid, accurate shots.
Young fellas can do the old sneaky creepy way better than old bastards like me. I can’t crouch walk for long, as the knees complain too much. Too much gut baggage. I told him to go slow and let me glue myself as close to him as possible – two pairs of eyes and ears, one silhouette. The stalk was perfectly executed, with enough cover and time to get a perfect field of view, pop in the ear plugs, and proceed with the cull from all of 25m. BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! I was proud of the way the lad smoothly cycled the lever and accurately swung in an arc from one highly startled goat to the other, smacking all five cleanly and killing every one stone dead on the spot. Three were headshot, which was not part of the instruction and an inquiry was immediately launched.
Why did you headshot them? I told you to shoot them in the shoulder.
Because I can. I’ve been practicing.
Yeah? When? How?
On Call of Duty, Dad. Ob-vee-ous-lee.
Yeah. Whatever. Ha fucking ha. Anyway, well done.
Teenagers, huh.
The headshot gore was unreal. The Nosler BT 150gr at 25-30m is spectacularly graphic, full on red misters, the splatter on the crown ferns was the stuff of a Tarantino movie. Literal complete head fragmentation. Not for posting really.
https://i.vgy.me/O184IF.jpg
Next day it rained again. We were thankful for the cooling effect as it had been very muggy. We set about some fence maintenance, pulling treefall off top wires and restraining them. As we worked our way round the fence at the bottom of the valley that keeps the stock out of the river gorge, we ran into a proper good pig, the kind of boar that the pig hunters get very excited about. It was wallowing in a drain and didn’t detect us for a good while, and even when it did he just stood there gawping at us. We were a ways off, but we could clearly see one torn ear and one missing altogether. When it turned and trotted off, the tail was no more than 3” stump. This pig clearly had some war stories. Hardly surprising.
The next several days were more of the same – a hunt, some laughs, some jobs, riding around the properties with my lad on the quad and me on the Kawasaki. We fed the eels at the bridge, catching them with improvised wooden “hooks” that we used to pull them in close enough to try and grab them. Strictly catch and release. The dogs got more exercise than they are used to and it showed, they’re getting old. The lad did several hours driving the Hilux, mastering the arts. Did an excellent job. As the days passed he got more and more accustomed to no internet, so his phone made far fewer appearances and it survived without being hurled into a dam.
I decided that a good job for Iain and I would be to clean one of the bridges of years’ worth of accumulated mud. That bridge was a fucking pain in the arse when it was wet, the edges were completely overgrown and there was no drainage off the bridge whatsoever. It was that bad that the muddy water was higher than a good pair of Meindls, and opening the gate at the end was a massive annoyance. So off we went with spades. A good way to keep the hunting permission healthy and fighting fit.
https://i.vgy.me/NVFse1.jpg
On our last day we decided on one more meat hunt, with me having secured some freezer space up the road. A gentle stroll up the track to get around the wind put us in prime position for deer o’clock. The spiker yearlings had been goofy as, as they always are at this time of the year without mum to look out for them. Iain spotted a young deer making its way out of the native way down below us, and on the proviso that he would go and get it, I gave him the rifle and told him to shoot it DRT.
https://i.vgy.me/UzoXgW.jpg
And shoot it DRT is exactly what he did. A perfect shot quartering towards, in through the front chest and out through the crease. Boomfa.
https://i.vgy.me/YYpgkk.jpg
https://i.vgy.me/4tNzgc.jpg
After the fun part had been successfully completed, the lad decided he wasn’t confident enough to do a clean job of the boning out, would I please come with him and give him another lesson? So I did, albeit dubious of the needing another lesson part. Truth is, the boy is a bit squeamish. I have to get my head around that – he’s happy to shoot it, happy to eat it, not so happy about the bit in the middle. We love our children unconditionally, we do our best. Squeamishness it just one of things that somehow, you have to battle through. Haven’t worked out quite how to do that yet.
https://i.vgy.me/k8XMgo.jpg
And that was that. We were done for the trip, time to go home.
We’d all had a great time. My youngest shot his first deer, my eldest continued developing his hunting & shooting skills. The wife was stoked to get them both on the tools and ticking off the achievements. She didn’t get a deer this time but she couldn’t care a jot about that, we'd had fun together. She knows she’s deadly when the opportunity arises ;)
Onwards.
