So we booked the Duck Lodge on Cranny's place with the promise we would remove the birds from Long Point once and for all. We have shot a lot of peafowl there but they keep coming back as Cranny feeds out the best tucker there. He has threatened to poison them several times if we did not get our act together. The problem with Long Point is that the birds roost on the Kumuiti Road side which is very difficult to access and see where the birds roost. This is how peafowl respond to hunting pressure; they roost in difficult places.
Caleb had days off so we drove down on the 15th with young fella, Joel, tagging along. He is 19 and has been carrying pigs for Caleb and learning the ropes for the last couple of months. He came out for his first peafowl cull a few days earlier and thought it was pretty awesome. Dan, from Himatangi way, met us there.
We started on Duncan's side of the river and got a bunch of birds but also spooked quite a few. When you come down from above roosting birds, they tend to spook. Eventually, we drove around to Long Point and used thermal vision to look across the river where we came from. There were birds everywhere. So we lined up for long shots and hit them one by one until there were only a couple dozen left. The rest were roosting in line with the house on the hill and there was nothing we could do about it. We had tried to find them there earlier but it was too steep and dense to see them. We also picked up some other birds along the river on Cranny's other blocks and a few on Biffen's. We shot 108 for the night thinking that was a pretty good effort.
The plan was to go to Jerram's after and take out more peafowl and all of the sambar hinds we could find. He wants the stags left for a few of his mates to target and that is fair enough. I had a lot of work to do in a few hours so I went to sleep. The boys went and picked up three sambar hinds.
The next morning they went back to recover them and as many peafowl as they could find on Duncan's. I, of course, am the lucky one who gets to pluck all of the birds. We got the work done, had a little nap, then headed to Harrison Road to scout a new block.
We saw plenty of birds as Will drove us around to show us where to go. We drove back to see if there were any birds on Long Point before dark; there was not a single one. We did pick up a few more big peacocks at other spots on Cranny's along the way.
Back around seven and it was extremely windy. We found a couple of the mobs roosting where we had seen them a short time before. We wound up with 31 and a couple of deer. We will head back on the 26th during our next trip down.
We headed to Jerram's again after that and got another 32 peafowl and a couple more sambar hinds.
It is not easy recovering Sambar deer. Most times you have to cut them up into smaller parts first. That's what the boys did on the second morning. But the amount of mince, sausages and schnitzel you get from one is amazing. Guess what I did all day? Then the boys went and scouted another new block on Denlair Road.
That night we went and got 63 more peafowl, a few hares and a couple of turkeys. Do you think the boys were finished? No, the went to Jerrams and got a couple more deer.
We checked Long Point several times after the first night. Although we know we left a couple dozen birds there unharmed, we did not see a single one on Long Point.
The next morning we were up early to process, pack and tidy up. All of the big males from the night before were packed up along with the deer. We were on the road around 9 AM for the six hour journey home.
I must say the young fella worked pretty hard and learned a lot over a short period of time. It is really good to have a runner/gate b*tch/carrier who is full of enthusiasm. He even got to shoot his first Sambar deer.
He was pretty tired on the way home.
So we shot 251 peafowl, a couple of goats, a bunch of possums, some hares and a few deer for the three nights.