Safety and Planning

Recently I attended a hunting workshop and it was great, arranged by the Game Council and hosted by Filskis at Capertee. The emphasis was on deer hunting and included different workshops focusing on different aspects like equipment, techniques and deer behaviour. It was alot of information and by sunday afternoon I had doubled my knowledge of deer, although the weekend was very comprehensive I found the planning and safety aspect of hunting could have been given more attention. the level of experience and skill of those that attended the workshop would have varied greatly, from the new, experienced and landowners who want to simply know more about deer. I noticed the majority of the people that attended the workshop were either experienced hunters or landowners that had a interest in shooting deer on their property, I myself am new to the deer hunting community and plan to learn and hone the art for many years to come, so I enjoyed the advice given by the more experienced hunters.
This post is aimed at new hunters or people who usually stick to trails and want to go off track, I found this to be a important consideration on how you plan to hunt. Using trails or hunting in a vechile means you won't get lost especially if you're on private land. But for people like me, I don't have access to private land and will usually hunt alone, Safety is my number one consideration. What I am about to describe is not the only way and certainly not the cheapest, but its my way. Anyone who has been walking in the australian bush off the beaten trail or has gotten lost would say how easy it is to get lost and how scary it can get. You may be 20meters or less to a light trial that may lead you to safety but you'll never know. Its so easy to loose your bearings when every directiion you turn looks the same, especially when you've got no reference points to work with. Some would say its just plain common sense not to go into the woods or hunt alone, It may be sound advice but not always practical. Its nice to have a hunting partner, but people have lives and families so they're not always going to be available. I'm a firm believer in that if something is important enough to you, you'll make it happen no matter what. Many things can go right and wrong when you're out in the scrub, some of these State Forests are well over 10,000 acres in size. For me safety is about managing many things, and like anything that has variables, its a system. A system that helps me plan and mange my trips. I would call it a Safety System, I view my individual pieces of safety gear as components of my System that I use to ensure my safety.  

Planning the hunt starts with me choosing the area I plan to hunt in, this is done by looking at which state forest is available within the region I plan to hunt, the Game Council provides PDFs online complete with the distance to each location via Sydney. This is important because I want be able to get there and setup camp well before lunchtime so I can spend mid day scouting. Once I have chosen the location I bring it up on Google Earth. I usually break the trip into three main components, first is the drive itself and hiking in and setting up camp, and scouting. The second component is the afternoon hunt/stalk, this is when I go into stealth mode, then the following morning is another hunt/stalk. Once thats over I might go looking for some feral animals to clear out before I head home. So for a overnight hunt I usually get two good hunting sessions, other times are spent on more scouting/exploring , eating, gathering water and relaxing. One thing that is important to me is inbetween the moring and afternoon stalks is getting some R&R time, its good for the soul to enjoy the peace and quiet that the bush has to offer. We're so busy in our lives and just don't the spend the time to reflect and appreciate the good life that we have,  when you sit back and listen to the sounds of the bush it will speak to you in many forms, the birds, wind and rustling of the trees there is a message for everyone if you listen carefully enough.

Now that I've got my location and looked it up on Google Maps, I'll pan around to look at the area down load the Hunting zone from the Game Council. This will clearly show the borders and any exclusion zones for the area I plan to hunt in. So once I know where I'm going using Google Earth Iand route via Google Earth I'll  switch to Garmin Basecamp, from there using the route tools I plot my track in the bush. I usually place way points on the map for important locations like where I plan to setup camp and water sources. Just bear  in mind when you're on the ground things may change and you may end up in another area, although its not a big deal if you've got a GPS with the hunting zones loaded. While in BaseCamp you should download the hunting zones from the Game Council website, these are detailed maps that will overlay on your existing map in BaseCamp, I use the Australian&NZ TOPO V3 map.

Once you're happy with your hunting location and trail you plan to follow then upload it into your GPS, you'll need a decent GPS for this, some of the cheaper GPS units will not allow custom maps. I use the Garmin 650T as my driving GPS and a backup for when I'm in the bush. For my Primary GPS I use the Garmin MAP62SC, these are expensive units costing me well over a thousand dollars for the both of them. It may sound expensive but its the price you pay if you want a adventure, on the end of the day you get what you pay for, keep these points in mind if you plan on getting a GPS.

At this point I've got my hunting trail, hunting zones and maps uploaded to both of my GPS units I'm ready to rock n roll, just don't forget your signed permission slip. This is the process I use to plan and manage my trips, BaseCamp is great in that it saves all my trips and tells me exactly where I walked and marks the exact location of any photos that I take. I organise all my trips, way points and photos in folders and allows  me to lookup any details of any previous trips.

As a added safety measure I also now bring with me a SatPhone, more specifically the Iridium Extreme 9575, this is the first SatPhone to have a GPS built into it, its not cheap at $1500 just for the handset and you'll still need to pay for airtime. I know what you may think, all these electronics are very expensive and there are ways to go hunting without the need for GPS, that may work on private property or if you simply keep to a road/path but if you plan to go off track and bushbash I suggest you think twice before wandering off into the scrub.

I'll be posting reviews on the GPS units and the Iridium Extreme 9575 soon, I hope you found this post interesting and useful.    

Vulcan State Forrest, overnight hunt in August

I've been looking at the vulcan state Forest for a while and decided to do a weekend hunt for some deer, I knew it would be cold and probably wet so I packed my kit, food and off we went. We started off at 5:30am from bankstown and it really shouldn't take more than 2.5hrs max but due to weather it actually almost 4hrs to get there. The Vulcan State Forest is past Oberon and I've actually never been there in winter, it snowed!!!! I had no idea we were heading into the snow, the first signs of this were on the highway when a car drove past us in the opposite direction with snow all over it. Me and my brother looked at each other and said " was that snow??"

Sure enough the sides of the road turned white and the tree branches had thick layers of snow. The area is filled with pine trees, shrubs, rocks and it was all covered with thick snow, It was beautiful. When we got to the entry point that I marked on my GPS the snow was so thick the car get bogged so I had to reverse and we hiked in. Now I've been snowboarding before and it was awesome but Its completely different when you're actually walking through a snow covered Forrest, in the ski fields its flat and crowded. When you're in a snow covered Forrest and there is no one else around, it is pristine and quiet. All you can hear is the wind and rustling of the pine trees.

Its a strange feeling you get when you're hiking in the snow, a sense of isolation, knowing that there is no one else around. You peer through the pine trees, through the shrubs but all you see is white. Snow and mist gently blow across your face with snow flakes dancing over your shoulder as it tumbles down your jacket, visibility was also low making it hard to guess the time by the amount of light available. Its a eerie silence, a feeling that both me and my brother got, we didn't speak that much while we were walking, I guess we were in awe of the snow covered Forest and how it seems to engulf us the moment we left the road, there are no trials or tracks, within 50meters into the Forest I realised if my GPS failed we would be in trouble, Its at this point it hits you that this could turn into a life and death situation if we were unprepared.

So we hiked in about 1.7km into the Forest it got thicker and colder. The temperature would have been about 2-3c, the snow was wet and felt more like drizzle after a while, and it was still falling when we found a spot to setup camp. luckily it cleared briefly allowing us to setup camp, the was our first priority was to get setup before dark, it could storm or blizzard any time so we had to make sure shelter was setup well before we trot off looking for deer. We decided to setup our tents right next to each other in order to talk through the tents especially during the night, it would be way too cold to get out for a chat during the night. We found a spot under a few pine trees, amazingly the whole area was covered in snow except under the pine trees, I figured maybe the pine needles were somehow melting the snow? we setup our tents and I used a tarp to setup a cooking / admin area so we could sit down under some cover in case it started to rain.

We were preparing to head out when we spotted a deer scratching on the tree right next to my tent, we were thrilled this was a excellent sign of deer activity.  The more we looked the more evidence we found of deer activity around our area. As we started to head out to a way point which I marked on my GPS we found trail after trail of what I am sure was deer. We found lots of droppings all over the place but I'm not sure if they were kangaroos or deers. We learned tracking animals in the snow wasn't as hard as we thought, we actually found it easy due to the snow prints they made, it was very clear and precise. We could clearly see different animals were moving around the area. We found kangaroo/Wallaby, Wild Pigs and Deer paw prints, I am very sure of the prints but I will do some further research to be sure.

By the evening we only managed to spot a few kangaroos and a Wallaby, so it was OK. We just felt so privileged to be there it didn't bother us at all. Dinner was instant noodles and tea, it's nice to have instant noodles out bush, I've done that for many years and it never fails to satisfy. I was actually surprised to find there were no leeches at all, we're thinking maybe they're frozen? One of the good points about hunting in winter is no refrigeration is required, we could of simply hung the meat and it would have been fine. If you're wearing the appropriate clothing its fantastic we were warm and toasty the whole time, unlike in summer its blazing heat and humidity there would be no way to cool down.

By the end of the day both of fleece gloves were soaking wet, so were our shoes and socks. I also then made the mistake of putting my wet jacket and boats in the swag so now my trousers from knee down were wet, which made my sleeping bag wet. Also because I didn't bring enough pegs to hold the corners of my swag down and me kicking about I kicked out the pole that was holding the bottom of swag up so that meant the damp underside of my swag was simply resting on my sleeping bag. Many many lessons learnt here, it was a cold uncomfortable night but you deal with it.

The next morning we got up and it was very different, we almost didn't recognise where we were. most of the snow had melted and the air was clear and crisp. blue sky's also adorned us, the sunlight was a relief from the cold damp night, I stood there soaking in the rays recharging my batteries. breakfast was, yup you guessed it instant noodles. We filled our bellies and packed up our gear ready to head back, but before we left we decided to have one more walkabout in the hope we might catch a deer by the river. I sat a course on my GPS and came to some shallow rivers. It was beautiful, clean and unspoilt its amazing when you go somewhere and find it in a pristine state, if we had found any rubbish we certainly would have taken it out with us.

As we walked around and found all sorts of prints and animal droppings we came across quite a few sites where wild pigs had been. The ground was all ripped up and plants uprooted, some of the areas were quite large, it seems this Forrest like many others have a serious issue with wild pigs, if I come across any I'll be doing my bit to reduce their numbers that's for sure. As for spotting deer seems we simply got up too late, next time it'll be a much earlier start, but it was hard getting up in the cold. We hiked back to my car and upon getting GSM coverage I called my wife to say hello only to be told someone had reported our car abandoned on the side of the road and they were worried about our safety in the Forrest. Luckily she convinced them we were well equipped and no less than two GPS units, slightly damp and cold but otherwise no problemo. This is the first of many trips and what a awesome trip it was, I'm packing my gear right now as we speak for my next hunt..

Lessons learnt:
1) Always have a pair of dry socks to sleep with.
2) Do not put wet clothes or boots in your tent/swag.
3) Don't go overboard with food, bring less.
4) Use gators, especially in snow.
5) waterproof your shoes.
6) check your pack, try it on with some weight in it and make sure it sits right and comfy.
7) Dump all unnecessary gear at the campsite before you go on a walkabout.
8) Minimise clothing.
9) Might be a good idea to let the police know you're there, especially if the weathers going to be bad.