Crocodile hunting in Australia

Emotive, yes it may be, but if you take the emotional rhetoric out of it just for a minute and examine the facts, this is good news for the outdoors-man:

“HUNTERS wanting to put a Northern Territory crocodile head on their mantelpiece may soon be in with a chance, after the federal government agreed to rethink a ban on killing the animals.” http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/nt-welcomes-croc-hunting-development/story-fn3dxity-1226395702179

The whole topic of trophy hunting for Australia’s Saltwater Crocodile has been an on-again off-again item for many years now. Protected since 1971, croc numbers have increased from an all time low of around 3,000 animals at the end of the commercial harvest era to an estimated 150,000 animals today.

Photo acknowledgement http://www.safaribwana.com/

A day out at the farm

It's been on the cards for some time now; I've had three rifles in the safe waiting to be sighted in. It's sad that none of them are mine, but the great thing is I get to take 'em out and run 'em in which is a whole lot of fun with new rifles.

Up at 3:00am, I loaded the Hilux and made the drive out to the farm on the New South Wales central tablelands, arriving just on dawn. I had a plastic cup-full of dodgy black coffee to get the joints moving before hitting the hills with my Canon DSLR and the tin whistle donated by Lulwut on our last outing when we went to the Bathurst Antique and Modern Arms Fair earlier in the year.

The first few stands were a waste of time though I did sneak up on a big wombat dozing above the massive burrow he had excavated by a patch of blackberry. I was here with my four year old daughter some weeks back spotlighting for rabbits and we caught a wombat in the light; we left the car there and I carried her through the dark, getting to within four feet of the old boy. She had a giggle while ol' wombat dug deep and raced up the slope ahead of us.