I got a nice eating size boar last night. It was one of those hunts where things seem to be against you, but when you have hunted long enough you know that if you don't try you wont succeed. So you try anyway.
For a start the wind was a confusion. At the base of the hill it was flowing up the valley. Half way up it was flowing down. I wasted quite some time trying to sort that out. In the end I decided to approach from ninety degrees to either wind.... and hope. There were about 10 in the group, a sow and two boars fighting over her, not that she was that interested. And the sows piglets. All were roaming around a terrace on a hillside. Almost dead flat except for a couple of small cuts where a swamp drained off the flat ground.
On the swamp was a pair of parries. A small duck like goose species that puts up a terrible alarm call that all game in NZ knows to listen for.
My only hope was either one of the boars would come close to the edge of the terrace, or that one of them would feed into one of the little cuts that drained the swamp. So I hovered off that edge keeping parallel with them for some time until I poked my head up just a little far and looked right into the eyes of the female parrie. The old sow and one boar knew something was up and headed back to the bush. The other boar had just stepped into one of the little cuts with the piglets and was still oblivious. I needed speed now so as quick and quiet as I could I came up over the edge and made my way to the cut until I could see the boars back. Hunched I waited till he came side on , and knowing that if I straightened I would be silhouetted, I drew back the bow, anchored, straightened and took one more step forward until I could see my mark and released.
I don't know what came first, but there was that moment the pig had an inkling something was wrong and paused his rooting to listen. It was all too late though as the arrow passed through him to just be caught by its fletches on the other side. Then that mad dash run up and out of the first cut and into the second. I didn't expect him to appear out the other side and after waiting 5 minutes I approached to find him dead.
How to describe the satisfaction of a successful hunt with a longbow? The training to build muscle memory. The eye hand co-ordination and subconscious action. The patience and perseverance. Knowing when not to shoot, which is most of the time, and being prepared on every hunt not to shoot, to come away empty handed.
Sometimes though everything is aligned and your hours of training allow you to send an arrow on its course. When this happens, every animal you take has a significance.
Topic: Sharing a little bit of sucess with you all. (Read 440 times)
