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Thanks to Fatboy404, I was put onto a nice hunting property, about an hour from my place.
I got the guided tour, last Saturday and couldn't have asked for better weather. The clouds didn't start rollin' in till mid arvo.
The country is a mix of fertile creek flats surrounded by rolling hills of shale and granite. Because of all the rain we've been having, the country is absolutely covered with feed and all the animals are fat.
I got something red-hot and throbbing between my legs ( the owner lent me his Honda quad ) and then we proceeded to tour the property, looking for goats.
I'm used to two wheels and a twist throttle, so it took me a while to get the hang of it and the first flooded creek crossing got my heart rate up I can tell you.
We went to the back of the property and had a look over the edge of a ravine for the goats, but they weren't there, so we motored over a couple of hills until suddenly the boss stopped, climbed off his quad, then came back, hunched over, to where I'd stopped.
He'd seen a small mob of them just over the next rise.
My heart rate was already up, from wrestling with the heavy steering of the quad and now it went into overdrive with adrenaline at the prospect of bagging a nice goat with my prototype 7x57 Verguiero stalking rifle.
Using a Horthorn bush for cover, I could see some goats about 80-100m out, so I got out the new Hakko 10x42 bino's to see which one would be a good meat animal. There was a young tan billy standing on a log about 75m out so that would be the one. I put the bino's down, picked up the rifle and rested against a dead tree for the shot.
I had the bloody buck shakes and to make matters worse the little bugger had jumped off the log and was now behind it. Shit.
The rest of the goats were further away and with no chance of stalking closer, I took aim at another young black billy and fired.
The whole mob ran off, including the one I'd fired at and instead of letting them go, I took a shot at one that stopped and missed that one too. Bugger.
I then fired at a mark on a dead tree about the same distance away and went to see just where the rifle was shooting. 5" high at 12 oclock. What the hell??? Then the penny dropped. I'd zeroed it with a 175g RNSN load and brought 154g Winchester PP factory ammo. What a dill. just put it down to KRAFT and carry on.

We motored around a bit more, showing me the boundaries, and stopped on a cleared hill ( on the left in the photo ) behind the "Turkey Nest".

We were looking for goats in the scrubby gullies when we spotted something white on a rock at the top of the third hill along.
Once again the 10x42 Hakko binos came into play and it was easy to determine that the white was indeed a goat and kid, sunning themselves.
It doesn't look too bad, in the photo, but the gully between the first and second hump was bloody steep and I'm not getting any younger.
Because of the wind, we had to make our way across this face of the hills and negotiate some slippery flag rock. I was knackered, so had to take a breather, 'cause I knew I was not far form the goat we'd seen.
Loading the rifle, I snuk around the last boulder and came face to face with my quarry. At 6m there was no mistake this time and it copped a pill right in the boiler room. The rest of the mob came over the crest to see what was going on and I killed one of them as well at about 7m.
We went over the back of the hill and there were about 40 goats of all colours in the scrub.
The boss took a couple of pix of the happy hunter and then we carried out as much meat as we could.

I haven't been hunting in the hills for 18 months and I was totally shagged by the time we got back to the quads.

We rode back to the homestead, packed the meat and had lunch.
I took it easy in the afternoon and went fishing in the creek that runs through the property.
This must be a lucky place, 'cause I finally caught a Redfin. Broken the jinx.

It was a lovely spot to have afternoon tea and unwind.

I'll be back for sure.

Cheers

Afro

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Flinch ? Wot flinch ? Gunsmithing is my PASSION.