If I was a gorgeous young chick, I’d have necessarily developed a coping strategy and foolproof technique for seeing off overzealous males.
I’ve never been gorgeous, never.
I have been young; however, my misspent youth is but a distant memory.
Shooing away overzealous males doesn’t come naturally then. Now, bailed on the doorstep by a handsome and enthusiastic bloke, I don’t know how to politely tell him to ‘take a hike.’ Oh, he’s not made any advances, and he never will, he just wants to talk about work. Work.
Mate, it’s the weekend!
It’s the weekend. It’s the roar – and the rut. Only yesterday I’d heard the first croak of the first fallow buck of the season.
Today, right now, I want to be leaving home with my boots on and a rifle over my shoulder. I do not want to be standing on the doorstep making small talk with a ‘betesticled’ stranger. How do I make him vanish – wave a wand and turn him into a toad perhaps.
Finally, the verbose workaholic exits my life, and none too soon. The gut feeling I have, ‘go right now,’ is so strong I swear there’s a loop of intestine in the shape of a lasso around my neck.
‘Go right now’ mode leads me to a secluded gully where I park my ute well short of Buck Croak Glade. Here I ready myself for the adventure ahead with all the essentials required to harvest an animal of the antlered variety.
I take no more than three steps when another noise captures my attention. An echo rumbles and bounces, a red stag is roaring, his location a muffled mystery.
A second stag replies to the first and this time my ears tell me a little more about this backcountry singalong. The anticipated buck hunt is foregone and forgotten, dualling red songsters now have my whole undivided attention.
I assess the geography, the wind direction, the roundabout location of the stags and make a quickfire plan. I’ve been out of my ute just five minutes and it’s all on. My gut feeling has proven 100 percent correct – right place, right time – right here, right now.
As I skedaddle up a narrow creek bed, slip-sliding on the algae slathered boulders and hyperventilating with excitement, the stags sing with increasing gusto. Down here the breeze flows north, directly midway between one stag to the east and the other to the west. Perfect.
I can barely contain myself as I settle under an old-man-pine tree and become a compass-like centrepiece. The natural amphitheatre all about me is layered with fierce roars and thundering echoes. The tinkling creek provides backing music, along with numerous blowflies and cicadas. Inside my head, I hear the rhythm of my own heartbeat as loud as the beating of an internal bass drum.
The stag to my east is stationary, holed up on a low ridge surrounded by an impenetrable acreage of recently thinned pine trees. His song tells a story of strategy and defence.
The stag to my west has just started to move and boy, he’s moving fast. Am I in the right place? Should I move to intercept him as he tracks on the contour, or should I wait and watch?West rapidly progresses from contouring to stampeding downhill. I can hear him smashing vegetation as he comes and the bass drum in my head ups its tempo.
Adrenalin proliferating in my bloodstream enables me to process information at an accelerated rate. Barely visible on the forested face is a vertical line, I guess it’s a derelict fence and West has turned to follow it downhill. This proves to be so, I see a glimpse of antler, a flash of red hide. Here he comes and yes, I am positioned perfectly.
So fast. It’s all happening so fast.
I sit on my bum, elbows to knees, rifle loaded, ready. The noisesome drum in my head cannot compete with the sound of stampeding stag. I cannot see antler for long enough to assess quality and quantity. There is no viable shot yet but the distance between the stag and me is diminishing by the second.
Suddenly West appears in all his glory. He skids to a halt in the long rank grass and roars with all his might. The only effective shot available is full frontal and into the base of his neck. At the crack of my rifle the big fella rears up into the air and topples backward – but then, unbelievably, he gets to his feet, roars again and charges on.
Oh shit. I lose my focus, attempt a running shot and clean miss. Undeterred, West keeps coming.
A small tree is my saviour. West pauses to roar defiantly and to beat the tree with his antlers. He smashes it, wrenching his head back and forth, bright red blood trickling from his neck. His eyes are bulging, nostrils flared. He twists sideways to get better leverage and exposes his ribcage and the heart within.
My rifle adds to the din, its projectile flies true but West does not hear it nor feel pain. He charges on from the tree, directly towards me, and I wonder if I’d hit him at all. He pauses where the fence turns at right angles and does a wee wobble. He is dead on his feet but is too defiant to register his own demise.
The big stag bounces off the fence twice, trying to push through, and then he falls dead just 30 metres away.
I sit in the dirt, drained and unable to gather my scattered wits. From bombardment with surround-sound and sensory overload to silence and success – and all just seconds apart – right here, right now.
Then, as the creek tinkles and the insects hum, the stag to my east lets out a long lusty roar. He remains King, winning the impending fight by default, never taking nor landing a single blow.
