At 48, it's not too late

FEATURE Ben Kendall 

Everybody’s story about how they got into hunting is different and mine is no exception. I began at the tender age of 48 years of age.

My line of work takes me to mine sites all over NSW and I get to meet a variety of great people. One such person is Tobie Hynes, who I met at a mine out near Cobar. During general chit-chat he mentioned he’d been out hunting deer, which piqued my interest immediately. Over a couple of years of catching up during site visits or over the phone, I decided to bite the bullet (pardon the pun) and set out on the journey of hunting deer myself. 

This turned out to be quite an exercise for a city dweller such as myself with no landholder contacts. I quickly established that I would need to join a recognised club, so I joined the ADA. Immediately I had at my disposal a huge resource of information and I got support from everyone I met. 

The mysterious process of deer hunting was unravelled and I set out on the path of obtaining all the training, licensing and registration necessary to obtain a firearm and hunt in designated state forests. It’s not a difficult process but is certainly time consuming. There is a lot of waiting, the longest being for the issuance of the firearms licence and the first permit to acquire (PTA), both of which have a minimum wait time of a month. If anyone ever had any concerns or misconceptions that anyone can get a gun on a whim, going through the process proved to me that most definitely is not the case.

The day I got my firearms licence I went into my local gun shop and took a shine to a new Lithgow Arms 308. I’d heard nothing but good things about them and the fact it is made in Australia made the decision to buy it a no brainer. I paid a deposit and then proceeded to wait 6 weeks for my first PTA to come through. This actually didn’t bother me too much because I then had to shop for a ’scope. The advice on ’scopes was unanimous; spend as much, if not more, on your ’scope than you do your rifle. This might hold true for someone who has bought a second-hand gun, but I didn’t go quite that far. 

The day I got my PTA, I went into the store to pick up my rifle and ’scope. Here is where I can’t say enough about the value of joining the ADA, as this lead to my introduction to Dave Byrnes, who it turns out lives near me and very kindly agreed to meet me at the store to assist selecting cleaning equipment, ammunition, and then setting up my ’scope and bore-sighting it. I couldn’t wait to get to the range!

I kept Tobie updated on my progress. After a couple of expeditions into the Nundle Forests, fruitless as they were (they were still great learning experience), he invited me out to hunt on a property in Murrurundi. I accepted the invitation without hesitating and the date was quickly upon us.

The 5.30am alarm was beaten by the high level of anticipation that had me up well before then. We drove onto the property and nosed into an electric fence to use the bullbar to get over it and onto the paddock; the promised land of abundant deer. He informed me that he’d never gone out hunting without getting something. No pressure. 

We geared up, jumped over the fence and set off in a southerly direction on the east side of a north-south ridgeline, looking for something tasty. I had pointed out to Tobie that I’m interested in meat, not trophies. We had an unfavourable light breeze from the north-west pushing our scent into the valley that we were hunting. It started to pick up and light rain came soon after. Awesome. At least it wasn’t cold.

We hadn’t walked far before we sighted a group of deer that spotted or smelt us and moved up the valley. Tobie was unconcerned by this. I admired his optimism. I was still sceptical of success. Tobie’s plan was simple, built on a lot of experience and knowledge of the area, and involved us heading higher up the ridge line, coming in at them in an easterly direction and hoping the wind didn’t swirl our scent to them. 

We spotted a group and started moving down, using whatever trees we could as cover. Some of them noticed us and took off, but two yearlings broke away from the group, ran through a thicket of reeds and stopped just on the opposite side, in clear view. 

The deer were downhill from us and seemed confused as to what to do. We lowered ourselves until we were sitting on the ground. I was trying to keep my adrenaline in check. Tobie estimated they were about 80m out and suggested I recline back on my backpack and steady the rifle against his leg to take the shot. I raised the rifle up to my shoulder, loaded a round and looked through the ’scope. 

Everything felt wrong. I’d never taken a shot in this position before and couldn’t adjust my eye relief to see the full view of the ’scope, but I could see the crosshairs and figured that should be enough. Trust the equipment to do what you’ve set it up for, I told myself. I lined the deer up and squeezed the trigger. Nothing! The trigger didn’t even move! I looked at the bolt and thought the safety was off so I did the same thing again twice more before deciding to pull the cartridge and load another. 

I know what you’re thinking, but deductive reasoning wasn’t prevailing for me in this situation, what with the adrenaline and worry that the deer were going to take off at any moment. It was a mystery to me that they hadn’t already bolted. They were certainly being very patient. Of course, reloading didn’t solve the problem. Tobie figured it out and flicked the safety at the back of the bolt off. I could see a bit of red now. This seemed like a good sign. I lined up again and squeezed the trigger… and the male yearling fell instantly.

“Good shot!” Tobie said. “Thanks,” I was smiling from ear to ear.

My full newby error of not being familiar with the safety mechanism on my rifle nearly cost me my first deer. To date, I hadn’t had any need to use it as I’d only been to the range and on my previous hunting trips hadn’t ever had opportunity to put one in the chamber. Fortunately, these two deer seemed unsure of what to do and so defaulted to standing still, giving me time to get my act together.

We hoisted the yearling male into a nearby tree and set out to check out the rest of the valley. We found some discarded antlers and Tobie showed me other signs that deer and pigs are in the area to look out for before circling back to the yearling.

Butchering in the field is a whole new skill I’m going to need some practice at. Tobie went to work, showing me how it’s done by getting started in each area and handing it over to me until we had the head off and the guts removed, ready to carry out.

We got him up on my shoulders and he was significantly lighter than when we had lifted him up.

“Hey Tobie, what do you reckon this weighs, about 60kg?” “Nah, 40kg tops.”

We set out back to the car. Carrying out my first kill was a hell of a moment for me, but the sheen soon wore off as the deer mysteriously felt heavier the further I walked. Fortunately, the rain stopped. We got back to the car and I was pretty tuckered out.

“Hey Tobie, how far do you think that was, about 2km?” “Nah, 500m tops.”

We loaded the car and headed back to Tobies’ shed where we hung up the yearling and went to work butchering. Then Tobie handed me a hand saw and said “You get to cut it in half”. I steadied with one hand and cut with the other, while Tobie steadied and kept my sawing aligned by telling me if I was going off line. Note to self: buy a reciprocating saw. We finished breaking the beast down, threw it all in my big Esky and I set off home with a big smile on my face, thinking “I can’t wait to eat all this meat so I can go hunting again”.