Queen's Birthday Hunt by

Karl Houseman

The Saturday morning of the June long wekend was freezing and with a collection of hangovers I couldn't get any of my hunting partners out of bed. Alone but eager I slung my 6.5x55 rifle over my back, started the bike and headed out into the chilly Bathurst morning.

I rode out towards the top shearing shed about 20 minutes away at a quick pace on the bike. I had been up here last weekend and saw a lot of foxes and a pig up this way, I was keen to maybe get a fox or two before breakfast and
leave the others a little jealous. The sun poked it's head up just as I got to the top shed revealing a beautiful morning if a little misty..

I inspected some bait that had been left the previous weekend for the foxes. The bait had been absolutely destroyed so I got on the bike to head back to the homestead and bring some more bait out in the ute. With the sun up I fanged it back toward camp, racing roos and nearly stacked my bike laughing at one that took three attempts to get through a fence.I was back-tracking my previous route but thought I'd stop and have a look through a gully that runs down to the river, to see if there was any fox activity.

The bike stalled and left it behind a ridge and went forward on foot. As I came over the ridge I saw a herd of about twnety five fallow deer further up the gully from me and two other bucks of good size about fifty metres away grazing and nudging each other playfully. I stopped and watched them for a while then they started to move away so I lined the closest one up with the scope crosshairs and squeezed the trigger.

The whole hillside came alive as deer, roos and sheep scattered in all directions. The deer was hit straight through the neck and dropped immediately. I watched through the scope to ensure the hit was clean then put another through his heart to be sure. He didn't even twitch.

Another bigger buck with a great set of timber than I hadn't even noticed, came into view from behind a rocky outcrop and ran down toward the river. The question was to let him go or take him. The antlers and the promise of
enough venison to feed the 20 or so people at the farm that night made my decision easy. I scoped up in front of the running buck and as he ran into the field of my vision the shot rang out. He dropped straight down and rolled onto his back and didn't move at all. I was about 70 metres away and very happy with the result.

A pair of fallow stags taken by the author.

The 120gn speer projectile entered just behind his front left shoulder and exited through the front of his chest. A clean kill. Both deer were in great condition, very heavy with matted brown coats. Not the prettiest hides that I saw over the weekend but the antlers weren't bad for the Fallow we find here.

The venison was great cooked in a hungi that night and made sandwiches for about 10 people the following day. The two capes came back to Sydney with me for the taxidermist and they'll look a treat above the bar in my rumpus room. My wife reckons they'd make unreal toilet roll holders but that wouldn't be right!

When I went back to the house for the ute and a boning knife the other boys were regretting not getting up early. I made them suffer, reliving the hunt for them. Still we got some photo's and saw a lot more deer that weekend all in very good condition and some with sensational yellow and white spotted coats, although the timber wasn't huge. We let them go for another season or two.

The next night spotlighting I got two foxes and my mate shot another two. We were heading back to the house to pick up another bloke who'd just arrived when we stopped to open a gate. The driver spotted the silhouette of a pig, barely fifty metres away. It was the pig I had seen on the previous weekend. I jumped out of the back of the ute, and hastily found a rest. My mate Chris had also jumped out from the drivers seat and was busy feeding rounds into his 6.5. I lined up just behind the front shoulder and squeezed the trigger. As the pig fell a second shot rang out. Chris had fired less than a quarter of a second after me and both shots had struck home.

The pig wasn't as big as I originally thought when I had first seen him the previous week. But it had a very distinctive and sported a good looking black and white harlequin coat. It was good to score the nice pig however the deer is my favourite memory of the weekend.