A HUNTER’S PATH

I remember the day my internal hunter was activated. I was 8 years old and we were visiting Windarra, an expansive sheep and cropping property halfway between Birchip and Berriwillock in the Mallee region of Victoria. This farm has been in my family ever since my great-grandfather Thomas McClelland acquired the first parts of it in the late 1890s, clearing hundreds of acres of Mallee scrub with bullock-drawn rollers and fire to transform it into the productive agricultural land it is today.

This day, 85 years later, my younger brother David and I were up early with Dad to check four steel-jawed rabbit traps we had set the previous afternoon at the entrances of some sandy burrows adjacent to a farm track. We’d made previous attempts at trapping rabbits without success but, now, as we alighted from the vehicle and approached the set, we spied a struggling rabbit diving unsuccessfully for the sanctuary of its dark hole.

David and I were astounded. We had actually caught a wild animal! It was by far the most exciting thing we had ever done and we watched in wonderment as Dad removed the hapless cony from the trap and dispatched it with a quick downward twist of its head. Later, at the homestead following our triumphant return, Dad skinned and butchered the rabbit while he gave us an anatomy lesson. He was a surgeon after all.

That day sparked in me an obsession with rabbit trapping that grew like wildfire into a lifelong passion for hunting wild animals all around Australia and the world. Not too long after that rabbit had its neck wrung, Dad bought a 3400-acre farm alongside the Edward River northwest of Deniliquin, NSW. That provided David and I with an enviable playground on which to pursue our small game hunting dreams. We had opportunities and experiences most city kids could never imagine.

We trapped rabbits whenever we could, with highlights provided by foxes and ferocious wild cats that also found themselves gripped by steel. By the time we acquired the farm we had also acquired more traps, and we were hefty enough to set most of them by ourselves…although I do remember Dave and I standing shoulder-to-shoulder trying to use our combined weight to depress the stiffest springs. We checked our traps with great anticipation each morning and night in the old Ford farm ute, sometimes in the company of our younger brother Tom. I had just turned 10 and sat on the very edge of the seat to reach the pedals. Then, later, I used money earned selling rabbits to the chiller to buy even more traps from an old man in Hay. Those traps are illegal to use now but still hang in my study as a reminder of my mostly unfulfilled childhood trapping aspirations.

When Dave and I entered our mid-teens our interest turned to firearms. We figured, quite rightly, that a rifle would provide a far easier method of securing rabbits. Eventually I convinced Dad and was with him when he obtained a firearms licence at the local Police Station, straight over the counter with a game permit included. Then we purchased a fairly rudimentary .22 LR and a 12-gauge shotgun, also over the counter, at Hoath’s Sports store in Box Hill. Times were different then.

Every second weekend at the farm David and I would fuss all Saturday over who would ask Dad if we could go spotlighting that night. We shot many rabbits and the occasional fox from the back of the same Ford we had previously used to check our traps. We also hunted on foot. Dave and I both enjoyed that more than spotlighting. Creeping around likely areas learning about animals and hunting them on their own terms is the method I still prefer today. I loved hunting ducks on the flooded rice fields, too, sitting among the mosquitoes and snakes on an earthen bank, facing the slowly setting summer sun and waiting for the hordes of crop raiders I knew would eventually arrive. The mew of a distant wood duck still makes my head turn.

When I got my driver’s licence the whole show clicked into overdrive. Dave and I finally had a mode of independent travel, not to mention our own much better firearms. And there was another itch to scratch, too. Big game. Or at least bigger game, and wild pigs in particular.

I devoured every magazine article about pig hunting that I could get my hands on. I still have copies of Sporting Shooter from the 1980s when Phil Steele was my favourite writer. His stories about hunting around Bourke inspired my wild dreams of one day shooting a pig myself…no easy task for a city kid with no contacts.

Doors opened when I followed in the footsteps of family members and enrolled in Agricultural Science at university. David and I were lucky to have unforgettable trips to vast properties near Menindee and Hillston, NSW. The amount of gear modern hunters accumulate seems ridiculous now when I remember we drove to those remote stations all the way from Melbourne sitting three abreast on the sweaty bench seat of my Holden WB ute without air conditioning. If there was something that couldn’t fit in the back, it simply couldn’t come. I was on hand when Dave shot his first pig and vice versa. I still have photos of both. He was no ordinary hunter: fit, strong, fearless and a damn good shot. He was a pleasure to hunt with and I treasure the memories of the adventures we had together in the Great Outdoors. We had big plans for many more.

When David was killed at the age of 19 it ripped a giant hole in my family and my heart that still hasn’t healed and I know never will. As well as that, I was robbed of a supreme hunting partner. It at once saddens me and annoys me: he was irreplaceable. I know for certain that I would have lived a much more adventurous life with his ever-steady hand at my shoulder.

Several years of study followed instead, after which my then new and now long-suffering wife Danielle and I departed for the crumpled green velvet of New Zealand, where our first two sons were born. I joined the Waikato branch of the New Zealand Deer Stalkers, which provided me the friendship of Good Keen Men as well as their deerstalking tutelage. I was only moderately successful with sika and red deer but learned skills that held me in good stead upon our relocation seven years later to Warragul, Victoria: Deer Central. I’m still an average deer hunter at best, but I have enjoyed watching the generational improvement in my sons.

As my means have increased with the accumulating years I have been able to fund safaris to Namibia and Zimbabwe as well as the Northern Territory. These trips have provided incredible experiences that I wouldn’t swap for anything. As one of my favourite hunting writers, Peter Ryan, once wrote: “I spent most of my money on hunting…The rest I just wasted.” I can relate to that.

After David, a handful of other hunting partners stepped up whose company in the field I have enjoyed immensely. Australians Buff O’Farrell, Mick Treeby, Mark Etheridge and Russell Pitkin, together with Kiwi mates Phil Meulekamp and Paul Lisignoli…I have been to wild places with these men. They have shared with me literally hundreds of campfires and huts in the farthest-flung parts of Australia and New Zealand over 40 years. We have hunted hard high and low, marvelled at Nature’s creatures and landscapes, laughed loud and learned lots, consumed many beers and roll-your-own smokes, and had a bloody good time doing so. You will notice the list is short. That’s because good hunting partners aren’t easy to find. They need to be people you know well and can trust like your life depends on them, because it does. Those characters don’t grow on trees so choose carefully.

The hunters whose company I enjoy most though, with no disrespect to the others, are the ones I am most closely related to. It is immensely gratifying that my now adult sons, Lach, Cal and Bill, are all passionate outdoorsmen who enjoy hunting and fishing, though those pastimes call them each in different proportions. They are all much better than me, for which I am happy to take credit as I follow behind. I am grateful the boys still tolerate the presence of an old man but, more than that, pleased that their youthful exuberance drags me into the field more often than I would go by myself. They are the afterburners to my hunting career.

So, to borrow a line from the great Arthur Bentley’s poem, I’m not quite throwing in the ends just yet. Hunting has provided me with many of my best days, but there is still warmth in my campfire. I intend to make the most of it because not everyone has that privilege.