DeeKnow’s Grotto

Had an email from Kirky last week asking if I fancied going deer-stalking with him next weekend, and today had an email exchange with a bunch of people about the perils of the exercise and a discussion about the way cullers dont seem to fancy the day-glo safety consious pink jackets that have appeared on the market..

----Original Message-----
> Here in NZ we have the mighty hunters who go into the bush 
> stalking wild pigs and deer, but end up shooting their mates. 
> Apparently it’s not that hard to mistake a two-legged hunter 
> for a four-legged beastie – or at least that’s what the 
> eedjits who get charged with manslaughter say. They refuse 
> to wear neon jackets because they think they look silly. 

Come on now ET, have you seen those bloody aberrations!!!! Most of my family (and a few friends) are deer 'killers' (I missed out on the gene apparently) and altho they can all see the sense in the day-glo stuff I don’t know any who will actually wear it.

These aren't *all* brainless red-necks by the way (tho some are :) they're from all walks of life and from across the IQ spectrum. Apparently you don’t have to be dumb to be shot by your mate.

As it happens Kiotie told me a dodgy story last week about the 1st deer shooting trip he went on. He was about 14/15 or so and his slaughter chaperone was guiding him through some hill country near Taupo when all of a sudden he stops, signals, and points nodding furiously to what appeared to be a Deer's rear-end through the bush.

Kiotie lifted the fire-stick to his shoulder, squinted through the sight, paused, squinted, paused again and the old boy asked him in hushed tones what he was waiting for. Turns out it was a horse, he'd paused coz he didn’t think it looked like a deer, and his mentor had known all along but just wanted the entertainment of my pop shooting a Horse.

Anyway, he went on to shoot untold deer (and scores of other living critters) and hasn’t shot any mates, yet. But you can see how it could happen.

I occasionally go for a walk with hunting mates to see them in action and I don’t think I've yet spotted a deer before they have. Sometimes it can literally be a moving leaf in the distance that will cause them to stop, and the 1st thing they'll see of the deer could really be just a flick of an ear without seeing any body parts.

Fortunately none of them have ever shot at just-an-ear but have waited till the animal is spooked and presented itself properly, but you can see how things go wrong in the heat of the moment.

And there *is* plenty of heat. I know it’s a beastly pursuit (nice pun :) and that the odds seem stacked in the hunters favor, but when you're in the confined space of damp dark sub-tropical jungle and there's a roaring, heaving, sweating puffing and angry antler-shod mammoth stamping menacingly close to you but horrifyingly out of sight through the undergrowth... it tends to get very tense.

It’s a pretty cool experience being the hunted in the bush, which you are at this time of the year.

Now, what did I do with those Venison sausages?

8:48:39 PM