Thread: Block 5

Here's Day 2 for me guys.

It started much the same as the guys above, up in the dark. The rain had cleared during the night and the southerly flow that followed had frozen everything.

No trouble with the gas for me being a user of an old school trangia running on meths. My issue was with the boots, frozen solid so the first pot of water went on those



Glassing at daybreak with a coffee located a stag travelling down a distant ridge but was soon lost as it went into the scrub. Second animal was that lone chamios which i am pretty sure was a buck heading uphill in the direction of the lads above.

With the initial thought that the deer would be mobbed up high I travelled upstream into a good katabatic breeze glassing some awesome country as I went.



However even with me glassing from below and the guys looking from above no animals could be found despite the country looking great.



I had managed to find a few wallows shortly after leaving camp but they looked not to have been used for at least a week or two.



The further up I went the less sign I saw. The freshest sign i had seen was close to the bush edge so with the voice of my dad in my head saying "fish your feet first son" I decided to do a U-turn and relocate camp to focus on that area.

The day breeze kicked in so I was lucky enough to have the wind in my favour both ways. More outstanding country was glassed but the lack of deer was hard to fathom.



We discussed at length why it might be that this valley that looked like it should be holding deer wasn't. After all we were in here for ungulate control. This was some of the ideas we had. Id be interested in peoples thoughts here.

1. The deer had fed thru this north facing area and following the feed had moved onto the southern aspects to take advantage of the late flush.

2. They were up higher still. This seemed unlikely as either myself or the guys on the ridge should have still seen them.

3. Being the second party in. The shooting from the first party may have sent them into cover.

Anyway camp was moved and a nice sniper spot was found above camp on the bush edge.



Just on dusk I finally spotted a deer (stag) moving thru the bushes on the bush edge. However with the fading light and scrub always obscuring him no shot was offered.

The radio chatter that night was a little despondent, i remarked "we are doing nothing wrong, we just arnt picking up the animals. We just gota keep trying"

Day 3 tomorrow fellas


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