This trip was planned for the first week of the school holidays but work got in the way again and then the second weekend of the school holidays but I ended up working right through so I could take the Friday off before labour weekend.
I really needed this trip I had been wanting to get up the lake for months and getting photos sent from mates trips while I was at work was torture!
The lake was pretty high with all the jetty's underwater and being Friday we had the lake to ourselves bar one old trout fisherman.:cool:
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I had packed for 4 days and planned to walk in away from the more pressured areas....I knew I was going to struggle but boy did I struggle!
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We turned a short walk into a long and arduous one and I was fair rooted when we finally made the hut.:wtfsmilie:
At least there was plenty of sign about, the hut book showed a trout fisherman 3 days previous and a hunter almost a month before so I was optimistic about our chances of finding a deer out on the flats.
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We cooked a feed and had a few games of Uno keeping our voices down while we waited for evening.
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As the shadows disappeared and dusk approached we put our boots on and quietly slipped out the door and stalked out to the river's edge to walk down peering into the flats between gaps in the scrub while having quick glances at the hut clearing as it came into view and as I did some movement caught my eye.
A stag was trotting out onto the hut clearing.
We saw each other at the same time He froze we froze, dropped down "you shoot it Dad" whispered my Son and I took the shot off my pack.
He was standing perfect front on with his head held high trying to work out what we were, I centered on his chest and touched off.
The trigger broke slightly before I expected it to( the bugger of having rifles with different weight triggers) and the Stag bolted!
Oh no! Did I pull the shot off into a shoulder missing the vitals?
Thankfully no he ran 50 odd yards and piled up.
Now you hope to shoot a deer on the first evening on the hut clearing but don't really expect that to happen so now I had 4days worth of food and gear and a whole clean shot stag to carry out.
Now if the walk in was a struggle the walk out was going to be even better!.
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Love it when a plan comes together and it was a long time coming but worth the wait to get back to my "happy place".
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