gamehunter6o
02-21-2010, 04:43 PM
It’s A Jungle Out There
I was pretty dejected as I pushed my way along the over grown track. The two dogs I’d been given a week earlier had just missed two pigs, but as they’d had no work for 12mths I guess I was expecting a bit much of them.
I noticed a lot of fresh deer marks on the track so made a mental note to watch the dogs reaction. I hate pig dogs chasing deer, but my dogs were still stuffed from the last run and were behind me. Suddenly I could smell deer and to my left there was a deer’s arse. Being just 6metres away I instinctively knew something was wrong. As I peered through the branches and leaves to see what was going on I chambered a round in my 243. Shit o dear, there was a stag standing back on to me, head turned to the left tangled up in lawyer and supplejack vines.
Peter and I started hunting Pureora forest in May and we’ve been having a great time, picking our weather but mostly just exercising man, dog and pig.
We relive the so called “good old days” as we sit down waiting for the dogs or breath to come back. Peter and I have got probably 90 yrs of hunting experience between us, that is maybe why we do the health and safety courses for the Tokoroa Pig Hunting Club. No, we don’t profess to know it all as we discovered over the past few months. As to our own personal safety Peter and I are pretty cautious, I have a saying “the closer you get to the end of the plank, the more careful you are”. But when it comes to a dogs safety, we could have just about encountered or heard of every hazard a hunting dog could face.
There is everything from poisoning ,pig rips and bites, tomos,(sink holes) bluffs, deer antlers and feet through to just getting run over on the road.
In the early ‘70s a mate had a dog get wobbly then fall over and die in front of him and on close inspection found a spot of blood under its throat. Phil being the type of guy he is, did an on the spot autopsy and discovered a cut off piece of bracken fern had ‘stuck’ him, cutting an artery and breaking off in side. The dog bled to death internally. Bizarre to say the least.
In mid May Peter and I heard one his dogs yipping in toetoe and bushes on an overgrown firebreak. It seemed a bit odd so we headed over there only to discover the blue merle snared around the neck by a lawyer vine noose and the dog had just kept twisting the same way trying to get out but only making the noose tighter. Neither of us had ever encountered this sort of hazard before and wondered what the outcome would have been had we not been within earshot. I told Peter that in April, my wife and I found the remains of a 4pt stag that had been eaten by pigs. I wondered why the stag had died and discovered some vine tangled around its skull and antlers, very few vines in fact, but it was obvious by the cleared area around it was enough to restrain him and it was there he died.
We never gave the incident with the blue merle much thought until we lost him a month later, and we were hunting through the area a week after he went missing. Sitting on a ridge above old workings, having a bite to eat, we heard Peters three dogs moving around down below, two came back up to us but one kept rattling around drawing the other two dogs down again, only to come back up. When the missing dog gave a couple of yelps, we thought we’d best get down there and see what the hell was going on.
What we discovered surpassed the ensnared dog of five weeks earlier, this dog was trussed up like a husky. The vines were under and over both front legs as well as around its neck and in a vane attempt to get free had started spinning around only to make its situation worse, shortening the vine and lifting its front legs off the ground. Now this dog would have been in trouble had we not been there to cut him free as there was no way the dog could have chewed the vine to free himself.
On the way home we reflected on what had happened, two dogs tangled in vine in five weeks and never seen it before or indeed heard of it happening before and was that the fate of the missing blue merle?.He turned up a week later at a sawmill village, very skinny but otherwise, OK.
mTie moved on, we caught some nice pork and I was offered two dogs by an old friend who has bad health. I was hunting mid-week, just two dogs and me to assess my new dogs when I walked into the entangled stag at the beginning of the story. I didn’t want venison and I DON’T shoot deer in front of pig dogs but the rifle went off anyway, and the headshot stag dropped, head held up off the ground by a rope made of forty lawyer and supplejack vines. I told the dogs to “leave it alone” as I stood astride the stag to stick it.
I stood there in the sunny clearing made by the stag, taking in what had happened not only here but since the four pointer in April. Four entanglements in four months and not one in my previous four decades of hunting. I had to get a photo because no one will believe this one, a twelve pointer tangled in vines.
A favourite saying of mine before going for a hunt is “I’ve got one tied to a tree” and its finally happened. I took off for my camera as I had left it in the ute and an hour and a half later I was back, photos taken, hindquarters and back steaks out, head off and back to the ute just in the dark. I reckoned the stag had been there for about two days as there was still food in his gut but he was going to die there. The deer marks around the area must have been his mates, coming to see how he was getting on. Peter saw the site a week later and felt sorry for the stag, suggesting I should have cut him free. What with twelve tynes, four hooves, many metres of loose vine as well as two dogs “helping” I’d have been a fool to even try. I don’t mind the idea of dying in the bush, but of old age, not stupidity.
If there’s one thing Peter and I have learned in the last four months, it’s that if you are going bush be careful, it’s a jungle out there.
http://i450.photobucket.com/albums/qq225/mossoprd/12pointstagTihoi27july06004.jpg
I was pretty dejected as I pushed my way along the over grown track. The two dogs I’d been given a week earlier had just missed two pigs, but as they’d had no work for 12mths I guess I was expecting a bit much of them.
I noticed a lot of fresh deer marks on the track so made a mental note to watch the dogs reaction. I hate pig dogs chasing deer, but my dogs were still stuffed from the last run and were behind me. Suddenly I could smell deer and to my left there was a deer’s arse. Being just 6metres away I instinctively knew something was wrong. As I peered through the branches and leaves to see what was going on I chambered a round in my 243. Shit o dear, there was a stag standing back on to me, head turned to the left tangled up in lawyer and supplejack vines.
Peter and I started hunting Pureora forest in May and we’ve been having a great time, picking our weather but mostly just exercising man, dog and pig.
We relive the so called “good old days” as we sit down waiting for the dogs or breath to come back. Peter and I have got probably 90 yrs of hunting experience between us, that is maybe why we do the health and safety courses for the Tokoroa Pig Hunting Club. No, we don’t profess to know it all as we discovered over the past few months. As to our own personal safety Peter and I are pretty cautious, I have a saying “the closer you get to the end of the plank, the more careful you are”. But when it comes to a dogs safety, we could have just about encountered or heard of every hazard a hunting dog could face.
There is everything from poisoning ,pig rips and bites, tomos,(sink holes) bluffs, deer antlers and feet through to just getting run over on the road.
In the early ‘70s a mate had a dog get wobbly then fall over and die in front of him and on close inspection found a spot of blood under its throat. Phil being the type of guy he is, did an on the spot autopsy and discovered a cut off piece of bracken fern had ‘stuck’ him, cutting an artery and breaking off in side. The dog bled to death internally. Bizarre to say the least.
In mid May Peter and I heard one his dogs yipping in toetoe and bushes on an overgrown firebreak. It seemed a bit odd so we headed over there only to discover the blue merle snared around the neck by a lawyer vine noose and the dog had just kept twisting the same way trying to get out but only making the noose tighter. Neither of us had ever encountered this sort of hazard before and wondered what the outcome would have been had we not been within earshot. I told Peter that in April, my wife and I found the remains of a 4pt stag that had been eaten by pigs. I wondered why the stag had died and discovered some vine tangled around its skull and antlers, very few vines in fact, but it was obvious by the cleared area around it was enough to restrain him and it was there he died.
We never gave the incident with the blue merle much thought until we lost him a month later, and we were hunting through the area a week after he went missing. Sitting on a ridge above old workings, having a bite to eat, we heard Peters three dogs moving around down below, two came back up to us but one kept rattling around drawing the other two dogs down again, only to come back up. When the missing dog gave a couple of yelps, we thought we’d best get down there and see what the hell was going on.
What we discovered surpassed the ensnared dog of five weeks earlier, this dog was trussed up like a husky. The vines were under and over both front legs as well as around its neck and in a vane attempt to get free had started spinning around only to make its situation worse, shortening the vine and lifting its front legs off the ground. Now this dog would have been in trouble had we not been there to cut him free as there was no way the dog could have chewed the vine to free himself.
On the way home we reflected on what had happened, two dogs tangled in vine in five weeks and never seen it before or indeed heard of it happening before and was that the fate of the missing blue merle?.He turned up a week later at a sawmill village, very skinny but otherwise, OK.
mTie moved on, we caught some nice pork and I was offered two dogs by an old friend who has bad health. I was hunting mid-week, just two dogs and me to assess my new dogs when I walked into the entangled stag at the beginning of the story. I didn’t want venison and I DON’T shoot deer in front of pig dogs but the rifle went off anyway, and the headshot stag dropped, head held up off the ground by a rope made of forty lawyer and supplejack vines. I told the dogs to “leave it alone” as I stood astride the stag to stick it.
I stood there in the sunny clearing made by the stag, taking in what had happened not only here but since the four pointer in April. Four entanglements in four months and not one in my previous four decades of hunting. I had to get a photo because no one will believe this one, a twelve pointer tangled in vines.
A favourite saying of mine before going for a hunt is “I’ve got one tied to a tree” and its finally happened. I took off for my camera as I had left it in the ute and an hour and a half later I was back, photos taken, hindquarters and back steaks out, head off and back to the ute just in the dark. I reckoned the stag had been there for about two days as there was still food in his gut but he was going to die there. The deer marks around the area must have been his mates, coming to see how he was getting on. Peter saw the site a week later and felt sorry for the stag, suggesting I should have cut him free. What with twelve tynes, four hooves, many metres of loose vine as well as two dogs “helping” I’d have been a fool to even try. I don’t mind the idea of dying in the bush, but of old age, not stupidity.
If there’s one thing Peter and I have learned in the last four months, it’s that if you are going bush be careful, it’s a jungle out there.
http://i450.photobucket.com/albums/qq225/mossoprd/12pointstagTihoi27july06004.jpg