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From: Nitro (Original Message) Sent: 8/31/2002 2:52 AM
I'm off this weekend for a day at Watervalley (or Watervale?).

A large property in the Southeast of SA, fenced, about 40,000 acres (or ha?) that has numerous game species most of them available for hunting. Including: deer - sambar, red, rusa, fallow, chital, wapitii and other species such as Indian Blackbuck antelope. Those are a beautiful animal.

Not hunting only having a tour plus hopefully lots of good photographs.

Will report back on how it all goes next week.

Have a good weekend.

Nitro

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From: Nitro Sent: 9/2/2002 9:07 PM
Visited Watervalley on the weekend for a tour. Watervally is part of a group of five properties consolidated and is about 4 hours away in South Australia. The property has at least 100,000 acres behind high wire and probably much more.

It is a great place to visit and operates as a hunting proporty with several outfitters operating there. We just went for an introduction tour and some photography.

Looked over many hundreds of deer and the species included: The Asiatics - Sambar deer, chital deer, rusa deer with some cross-breeding of Rusa and Sambar. Most of the Rusa have been relocated to another section of the property which we did not visit but we did see a few pure bred Rusa and some quite nice pure Sambar. These Sambar would not be passed by if seen in the wild.

Also the European and American deer - Red deer, fallow deer and some Wapititi crosses in the reds. There is a large herd of wapitit on the property and these can be viewed as they are in a small paddock (200 acres) for velvet deer farming. Sighted stags included a 14 pointer red, several 12 pointers, but most of the red stags had uncharacteristically dropped their antlers early. Some up to two weeks ago. Probably due to the unseasonally warm summer. August statistically has an average temperature of 11 deg C, but this year the average was 17 deg C! Like mid to late Spring, and dry. Though tonight it is raining - yeah.

And a few dozen water buffal, including one or two trophy (or approaching trophy) standard bulls.

The property also has some blackbuck and hog deer though we didn't site any of these (the hoggies are on a different part of the property to which we did not have access).

A number of roos and emus and ducks, geese and swans. Numerous rabbits.

The animals appear quite docile when photographing from the car, but get out to take a photo and they do not stand fro long. The fallow deer and the beautifully spotted chital or axis deer were the most skittish. The large trophy standard animals generally melted anyway much quicker even when just viewed from the car.

Shot numerous photos - to follow once the transparencies are developed. Hope to return there for some decent photographic sessions plus some hunting - in season next year!

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Nitro

"I love the smell of cordite in the morning."

http://NitroExpress.com

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