I got some of the next few pictures from Andy. He and Mick had driven over 20 hours from Mick's home near the east coast, traveling in two of Mick's vehicles pulling trailers and carrying in everything for the next 6 weeks of hunting with six groups of hunters. Here are the pictures of the vehicles on the long road to the camp.
After the long trip to the outback, they finally arrived at the spot by the creek where they unloaded the equipment and set up camp.
The camp was fairly spartan, but still very comfortable with everything we needed, and then some. There was the cooking and eating area that had tables, stoves, electric refrigerators and freezer, a sink, running water from the creek, a campfire, a water heater, and everything else to cook, feed, prepare shower water, and generally make us comfortable when we were up and about. The cooking area and part of the lounging area were covered with overhead tarps to shade us from the sun and heat of the day and retain some heat during the evening by the fire. One of the vehicles was used as the pantry for food and supplies that we used, while the other one was used to travel to hunting areas with the four of us together or to transport two of us while the other two rode to less accessible areas on a four wheel drive 4-wheeler.
Doug and I were under a 10'x10' canopy sleeping on comfortable cots with mosquito netting while Andy and Mick slept on cots with integrated netting/covers. We had a nice bedside table for our things and tables on a tarp directly outside our tent for sitting and preparing our equipment. Our canopy was set up on the tarp that is on the ground just this side of where the 4-wheeler is sitting in the picture. Down the creek about 30 yards was the latrine and in the opposite direction some 50 yards away was the outdoor shower that consisted of a canvas bucket suspended from a tree with a rope that had a shower head and a hand valve. Hot water from the water heater over the camp fire would be flowed into a 5 gallon bucket and mixed with cool water to fill the shower bucket and give us all a welcome cleansing at the end of every day. It was a very comfortable and functional camp to spend a week in. Mick and Andy were the cooks, dishwashers, fire builders, skinners, and jacks of all trades in the camp. These are two very efficient, hard-working, resourceful men. I already felt like I knew Andy to a fair extent, and Doug and I were very happy to get to know him and Mick well over the course of living and hunting with them every day for a week.
Doug and I were very pleased when we arrived at the camp and saw how nicely it was set up. We unloaded our gear, set up our bows, and headed down to a dry creek bed to shoot some arrows with Andy and Mick. Here is a picture of Doug dressed in his Kuiu Merino shirt and Attack pants shooting some practice arrows.
Andy, like me, loves his Shrew bow. I was very afraid he was not going to let me take my 60" 68#@29.5" Super Shrew Samurai "Buffalo Bow" home with me after the hunt. You can see that on the very first day I met him, he already had my bow in his hands and was coveting it. He shot it several times over the course of the week and was very proficient and accurate with it, including picking it up one day, taking a shot from 40 meters, and hitting one inch from the center of the 3 inch bullseye! :eek:
Andy is an excellent shot, and when he gets the money together, he is going to buy a bow almost identical to mine, but probably with a few improvements that I have discussed with Gregg Coffey for another "Buffalo Bow" that will soon be built for Doug now that Doug's name has come up on the order list for his second Shrew. On this trip Doug used a vintage Brackenbury Drifter that I gave him that is 64" 74#@30.5". It is a very nice bow, but was much heavier and bulkier than my Shrew "Buffalo Bow" and did not shoot the arrows any faster. My bow quickly became the camp favorite.
The Kuiu clothing is incredible, but it was designed for mountain hunting, not the tropical hunting we were doing in the Northern Territory of Australia. Jason Hairston, the founder and owner of Kuiu, is very responsive to the needs of his customers and has said that in the future he plans to produce a line of hot weather hunting clothing that would be much more suitable for this kind of hunting where temperatures reached 90 degrees during the day and nighttime temperatures were mild enough to barely require more than a light jacket or sweatshirt. The Vias camo pattern worked well in this environment, but Jason is also in the process of developing a green camo pattern that would probably have worked even better. Also, Jason plans on producing a short billed cap for archers. I really like my Vias camo Kuiu cap, but it has a longer bill that obstructs my shooting, so I used a short billed cap for all my hunting. For some reason Doug's draw does not create a conflict with his Kuiu cap, so he wore it exclusively and really liked it for his hunting. After a week in the bush, Doug's cap looked like a duller, browner version of my more pristine Kuiu cap. Some of my later pictures from the first day of hunting will show Doug wearing his Kuiu Merino shirt and Attack pants, but he opted to wear cooler clothing for the rest of the trip after the first day. This is nothing negative about the Kuiu clothing. It is the best in the world for its intended purposes, but some different purpose built clothing are needed to make Kuiu ideal for tropical bow hunting: a cool, light, synthetic, short-billed cap like the one I wore from another manufacturer; a cool, lightweight, long-sleeved (with roll-up, tabbed sleeves), synthetic, tough, two pocket (with fastening flaps), collared shirt; and Attack shorts. Two sets of shirts and shorts like those along with two pairs of Merino or synthetic boxer undershorts, three pairs of Merino or Coolmax socks, a lightweight jacket or sweatshirt, some safari gaiters, and a good pair of very lightweight boots would be all that was needed to wear for the hunt. We used a bucket with soap and water to wash clothes out on a daily basis. Of course, we needed about 3 sets of clothing for travel days where we had to be a little more presentable.
Allan
Topic: Somewhere over the rainbow -- back from the land of Oz (Chapter One) (Read 16751 times)
