Post by: Dean Torges on April 16, 2003, 02:44:00 PM
It's a wonderful experience in the rain forest mountains of Eastern Queensland not far from the Barrier Reef, a place full of wildlife and birds of every hue, size and description. Especially fond of cuckaburras cutting loose in the low light of morning and evening. They sound like Northwoods loons with operatic range, all recently escaped from the asylum, celebrating their new freedom. Red deer stags roar their loudest and hardest in the evenings and mornings, too. Stalking close to a stag who sounds like an enraged lion while having a family of cuckaburras go off the deep end makes the skin on your neck shrink and your hair curl.
You may know the European red deer as the Hartford Insurance stag. That's him. Bigger than a whitetail, smaller than an elk, very much resembles an elk in his habits. During the roar (rut), he is more vocal than our elk. He gathers up hinds just like a bull elk gathers up cows. The hinds are silent except for their alarm bark, so red deer stags do not respond to calling as well as elk. However, on this trip, I witnessed two occassions when stags got so worked up roaring back and forth that they charged one another and had at it. Once I was screened off by a gully full of lantana (which is like multi-flora rose) and couldn't get to them, and the other time they were too far off for me to close the gap before the fight broke off. With reasonable practice, you can do a good mouth imitation of a red stag's roar, especially if you have a bugle tube or some other hollow apparatus to growl into and add dimension to your voice. Nevertheless, I seldom imitate the roar myself, preferring to stalk in silently and take my chances without betraying my position. Can't resist the temptation now and then to play challenges with them, though, especially at the conclusion of an evening's hunt.
When the stags turn on, they roar at sufficient intervals to allow you to pinpoint their position and ease in on them while they move between bedding and feeding areas. Stalking at its finest. Very exciting. I hunt early in the roar, before the good ones have gathered many hinds. Hinds of course act as body guards, keeping their stags from harm. The first year there I was lucky enough to get through three hinds following a good stag and get an arrow to him. This year I got through to one chasing a hind and made a good double-boiler running shot. Tried to grunt him to a stop as he sped by, but no success, so pulled back and let loose. Fella took a few more bounds down the mountain and then leapt into the air in that graceful slow-motion arc you see African plains antelope exhibit when they want to fly above the crowd. He never gained wings, or if he did, his magnificent soaring leap likely crowded the sun, melted his feathers and then crashed him back to earth. I was more spectator than participant.
Had many other stalks blow up on me, one notable close encounter lasting several hours on a humongous, vocal 5 by 5 with five hinds in tow. You gotta wait out a situation like that as patiently as you can, not making any mistakes, staying close but not crowding the situation, aware of each pair of eyes, counting on your quarry to make at least one big mistake. He never did, and they always win in a draw, even if you do everything exactly right. Of course, you win, too.
Thassit. Or at least the abbreviated version. Have spent a total of about 8 weeks hunting Australia now, from the Outback to the rain forest, for goats, pigs, red deer and a few russa, too, and want to say that if there were small game to hunt, OZ would be the premiere residency for anyone who loves the bow and arrow. I'll be back next year, looking to the Northern Territory for barramundi, boars and bulls with my mates Glenn and Harry, and for as many more years following as the money permits and the breath survives.
Now back to Ostrander. The garden needs plowed, the hen house readied for a hundred chicks. The grass needs mowed, too, and bidness needs taken care of, all of it this week so I can go chase turkey birds and hunt mushrooms with Lew next week.
Good luck to the new website, TradGang.com.
Post by: Coop on April 16, 2003, 02:54:00 PM
Post by: Madpigslayer on April 16, 2003, 02:54:00 PM
calvin
Post by: joel smith on April 16, 2003, 02:58:00 PM
Post by: Joey Ward on April 16, 2003, 03:31:00 PM
Yeah, those cuckaburrows stick to everything, don't they? Aggravating little boogers.
Say that's a red stag on the Hartford commercial? Always thought it was a Shetland elk.
Joey
Post by: Al Snow on April 16, 2003, 03:41:00 PM
They got crawdads in OZ?
Post by: Rick McGowan on April 16, 2003, 03:46:00 PM
Post by: Tom Leemans on April 16, 2003, 03:59:00 PM
-Tom
Post by: the Ferret on April 16, 2003, 04:48:00 PM
Post by: Timo on April 16, 2003, 06:47:00 PM
Post by: Van/TX on April 16, 2003, 09:12:00 PM
Post by: WildmanSC on April 16, 2003, 09:30:00 PM
Bill Lamb
Post by: '46 on April 16, 2003, 11:00:00 PM
Post by: Dean Torges on April 16, 2003, 11:06:00 PM
First off, it's toads and not frogs, and none swallered me. It's kinda the other way around. You're supposed to dry the skins and lick them. Leastways that's what the hippie community around Maleny does with cane toads. Poisonous otherwise. Most of the animals have learned quick to quit eating them.
Unless you're talking about the frogs that live in the water closet and the bowl of every commode in every shepherd's cabin in the Outback, and go down the tubes and outta sight with every flush, scampering back up the sides when the cascade subsides. They're too small to swallow much of anything. About the size of the thumb digit. There's a photo of them on my website with the lid off the water closet, on the Australia page of the gallery. Took me a minute to focus the camera. You shoulda seen the writhing mass when the lid first came off, as soon as the light hit them, before they started diving for the bottom. http://www.bowyersedge.com/gallery.html
Second, my family always used a spoon for cracking squirrel heads. What you couldn't suck you could scoop, and it was good too for prying off the best meat on the squirrel, the cheek meat.
Third, yes, there are mudbugs in OZ, Al. They call them yabbies, and they catch them in yabbie pots. Damned good. Just lack the major pincers of craws. Kinda look like a cross between shrimp and craws.
Now that I think about it, there is an abundance of small game hunting, too. Cotton tail rabbits in some places where they haven't succumbed to a disease introduced to control their numbers. Also squeaking foxes in to the bow has been refined to an art form there. Fellas make their own little squeakers with a piece of bent tin and a hole drilled through it. Just not allowed to hunt any indigenous species of anything, although when you ask if you can shoot something like a golah or pigeon or just about anything maybe short of livestock, the answer is always some variation on "Well, you're not allowed to, but you can if you want to."
And last, yes, Joey, them cuckaburras stick to you pretty good. Or, as McGowan sez, "that OZ place really gets in your blood, don't it?"
Post by: bayoulongbowman on April 16, 2003, 11:24:00 PM
Post by: Dean Torges on April 16, 2003, 11:37:00 PM
Tell me if you could. You sneak up behind on a big red 'roo resting in the shade. He's lying on his side, and his head is propped up on his hand, just like gramps watching pretty girls walk by, sipping a soda and cogitating the universe. I don't think you'd want to.
You can't hardly sneak up on a wallaby unless you do a doddering old fool impression, bent over and just kinda shuffling along, looking at the ground in front of you, body swaying back and forth, moving slow. Wish this deception worked on red deer, as it's come to be quite natural with me.
Post by: Longbowwally on April 17, 2003, 07:55:00 AM
Wally
Post by: Terry Green on April 17, 2003, 10:31:00 AM
Post by: Douglas DuRant on April 17, 2003, 09:54:00 PM
I always wanted to shoot one of those flying monkeys. Oh wrong OZ! Sounds like a great place to hunt.
Post by: Buckeye on April 18, 2003, 09:45:00 PM
B
Post by: Rick McGowan on April 20, 2003, 11:03:00 AM
RicMic
Post by: Alan on April 21, 2003, 01:37:00 AM
All the best, regards Alan M. Kidner( Silverfox)
or Al in Oz.
Post by: Dean Torges on April 21, 2003, 08:44:00 PM
I wish I'd gone to OZ when he first invited me there ten years ago. We'd been corresponding for a good while, well before we had computers, but I was never moved to travel there until Glenn spent a summer with me several years ago and brought his archery hunting album with him. When I looked through it, I made a commitment and went to OZ the very next April.
I'd forgotten about the feral cats. Killed one while stalking pigs near Longreach. Missed about 4 others at night over a can of sardines in front of our shepherd's cottage, but that's a long and humiliating story. No room for it here. Nope.
Some of these critters have achieved almost small bobcat size and are absolutely decimating the ground birds in the Outback. I found feather tufts marking kills under most every short, scrubby gidgy tree near Longreach. If I lived there, I'd concentrate on some way to hunt them. Furs are pretty and cat meat is good. On the other hand, they'd be a challenge, but can't imagine broiling flying monkey.
Rick is correct. OZ does get in your blood. The buffs in the Northern Territory have him transfixed. The rain forest red deer have struck a chord in me, and I flat love the roar. It's something like I imagine elk hunting must have been before we learned to call them.
Post by: **DONOTDELETE** on April 21, 2003, 08:47:00 PM
!["[tunglaff]"]("graemlins/tunglaff.gif" "\"\"")
...Van
Post by: Glenn Newell on April 22, 2003, 01:06:00 AM
Post by: Mathias on April 22, 2003, 09:13:00 AM
Post by: Joey Ward on April 22, 2003, 10:01:00 AM
And more importantly, why were there any leftovers? Hate to see folks throw perfectly good food out.
Shoulda used some Ol'Roy for bait.
'Course that ain't bad either. A little crunchy, but a beer will wash it down.
Post by: Al Snow on April 22, 2003, 10:10:00 AM
Set out to catch an armadillo in a havahart trap this weekend. Used a rotten banana peel, as conventional wisdom says. Thought I'd spice it up a tad, so smeared some canned catfood on the nanner peel. Caught a huge old boar coon. Had a fun time getting him out. He wasn't real friendly. :eek:
Post by: Dennis/MS on April 22, 2003, 10:43:00 AM
Post by: Al Snow on April 22, 2003, 11:19:00 AM
I'm strictly trying to trap the 'dillas out of the yard. They're tearing it up. Right now they're coming out after midnight, past my bedtime, so thought I'd try trapping.
I've had coon, and it is good when fixed right. Still haven't tried possum, though. :D
Post by: George D. Stout on April 22, 2003, 12:09:00 PM
Post by: Dean Torges on April 22, 2003, 12:22:00 PM
Quote
Originally posted by Glenn Newell:Thanks for the sentiment, Glenn. From the heart, I am sure, and pretty much the way I felt when you left here.
...I'm glad you're home too.
You're no longer a goat-footed balloon boy. Harry suggested you use the Seat of the Pants harness when you scamper around on the Shorncliffe trusses looking for the pilings where the fish hide. Thataway, a twelve foot flop into two foot water wouldn't scare the pier barramundi and ruin Harry's and mine fishing.
You'd still be our chum, though.
Post by: Al Snow on April 22, 2003, 12:39:00 PM
Dean, were you a lit teacher in a former life? There's probably not five people in the country who could work an ee cummings quote into a Hunting in Oz thread. :thumbsup:
Post by: Joey Ward on April 22, 2003, 12:51:00 PM
No..no.. that woulda been by Hydro Cephalic.
Post by: Al Snow on April 22, 2003, 01:05:00 PM
Oops.....wrong thread. :knothead:
Post by: Joey Ward on April 22, 2003, 02:35:00 PM
How about a possum footed ballon boy? :p
Post by: Dave Bulla on April 22, 2003, 02:45:00 PM
By the way, thanks for ruining my self confidence. :knothead:
I just typed up a story to submit to the article and story page here and thought I'd really come up with something but then I read your post where you are just casually telling about your hunt and realized mine was crap. :(
Just kidding. Can't expect a guy who hated english class more than any other to be able to write well eh? Amazing though, I love to read.
Dave
Post by: countrygirl on April 22, 2003, 10:04:00 PM
Awesome story...sounds like a wonderful time! Dina
Post by: Chuck Wyatt on April 25, 2003, 09:20:00 AM
Post by: Terry Green on April 25, 2003, 10:36:00 AM
Love the avatar.
Post by: George Tsoukalas on April 27, 2003, 07:58:00 AM
Jawge
Post by: trashwood on April 28, 2003, 01:04:00 PM
If ya thank about Dean for a minute ya realize he is gonna do just fine hunting down under. He has kinda got the Aussie trait of when his mouth is moving ya got know idea if he is about to set the hook in ya or it is all the gospel. Infact some times it takes me a week to realize he just got me :help:
So red stags chase hinds when they are in the roar. Now that kinda sound like sumpin a Texan would do.
Rusty
Post by: Dean Torges on April 28, 2003, 03:12:00 PM
You're correct, though, about their character. Can't trust them except to come straight at you--with a grin on their face. Freezes most civilized men, and it gets ugly from there. That's why I had to get Glenn banned from TradGang. When he read where he'd still be my fishing "chum", on the pier or if he fell in, I knew he wouldn't be able to obey by the rules of this bulletin board.
Post by: trashwood on April 28, 2003, 10:58:00 PM
"You write like a dingo eats breakfast: a quick piss and a look over his shoulder. 'Cept you don't look." -
I don't think I have ever had my writing ablity express so accurately before. The closest anyone had come to captureing the true talent of my writing ability was a friend of mime named Harold Wayne Miller. He said I took to writing like a cat takes to a hair ball......Well now I guess that means I come by my writing skills natuurally :p
Well I just wait patient till the Pulitzers discover me.
Rusty
Post by: Douglas DuRant on April 28, 2003, 11:27:00 PM