It’s been a big day in the hunting world. This gripping account is from our man in Whiporie. As more and more plants and creatures join the threatened species list, hunting is becoming increasingly popular among enthusiasts who like to exercise their tagging and tracking instincts.
Dairy of an Owl Hunter:
(An unbiased account of owl discovery.)
A brief recapping of the last episode - in case you have the attention span of a dead caribou (or I forgot to mail you).
There I stool on Maclean Pinnacle, marvelling at the view - and moderately surprised that I was receiving a signal from the long lost, possibly dead Charlie. This was a defining moment in the history of Masked Owl tracking. Although the signal was small, there is an infinity of difference between no signal and an eensy weensy tiny weeny signal. I spent the afternoon driving around in the Maclean basin, but got nowhere - other than picking up Albert, over 40km away.
After regrouping and studying maps, the next day the hunt was on for real. Charlie would not escape.
Out of curiosity, I returned to Maclean Pinnacle. Below me there was a splutter of radio interference and nothing could be detected through it. I had thought that this was a night time phenomenon, but obviously there had been a blackout the day before - allowing me to peer through it. I moved to another part of the pinnacle where I had a clear view. There was no interference here, but still I got no blips. (Mind you, my receivers seemed to be acting up, and the best one had a low battery for some reason.)
I headed down into the basin again, destined for a 200m peak on the Coast Range Road in Candole state forest. Because of the fires, the road up to the range had been recently reformed and it was adorned with 1 metre high bumps that the Hilux handled almost as if the bumps had been designed for Hiluxes.
When I got up to the first peak, there was a dramatic cool, humid wind - perfect for the moment. I psyched myself up with the owl hunter's mantra : "There's going to be nothing bloody here. This is all a complete waste of time and I'm going to be spending the next 5 hours being disappointed."
I studied the peak. The peak itself was no good. The trees were the wrong shape and the rocks were the wrong colour. This was going to be a problem for radio signals. Using my finely honed owl hunting instincts I picked a spot further out on the ridge, where the land fell away from me almost as steep as a cliff. The view would have been great, if it weren't for the thick blue haze that covered everything.
I did a sweep with the antenna and got nothing. See, I told you, this was all complete waste of time. After a second sweep, there was a signal. It was faint and coming in bursts of a few seconds and then going. Well, there you go, the owl hunting mantra had worked at last. When I got back up to the top of the ridge, I remembered that some sort of yippee dance was probably in order. It was surprisingly easy to get into - even if I was effectively just talking to myself a bit louder than normal (that's all I'll admit to anyway). I scanned for the signal again and could get nothing. Yep, the rocks were definitely the wrong colour here.
The signal was coming from down south - hugging the oblivious contours of the range. I couldn't tell what sort of distance it was coming from because I suspected that a nearby peak may have been obscuring the signal. I traveled down the range, marveling at how well someone else's car handled the rough terrain. When I got out at the next peak, I couldn't find my clipboard. In the excitement, I had left it on the last peak. I got another 2 chances to marvel at how well the car handled the rough terrain.
After taking another two readings, it became apparent that the signal was, in fact, coming from the south, and was not being obscured by a nearby hill. But how far??? It seemed like it had to be at least 20km. I dropped a line due south on a map and realised that the Station Creek pine forests were there. Could Charlie have been pining for the pines?? Perhaps an ancestral race memory had at last awoken in his primordial subconscious. Since I didn't know how far the range road would go before being blocked, I went back out onto the highway and headed for Brown's Knob, a site noted for its high animal diversity.
Brown's Knob had been burned to a cinder, so it's lucky I wasn't counting on the high animal diversity to find Charlie. I didn't have to go all the way up the knob to get a reasonable signal from 20 degrees north. This meant I had gone too far south, and he certainly wasn't in the pine forest. More like Minnie Water. Travelling back up the range road to the Minnie Water road, I got progressively stronger signals coming more and more obviously from Minnie Water. (Shit the road was rough.)
It was now dusk, on the Minnie Water road, and the interplay between the hunter and the hunted was now at the fore: me moving in a truck and Charlie sitting still in a log. A battle of wits and cunning, played out many times in human history.
Near where the signal came 90 degrees from the road, I wondered how I could penetrate a kilometre or so of this dense scrub in pitch black and find my way out again. The 32 year old 1/100000 map wasn't making any sense, as it was showing a deleted road. Luckily, someone had bulldozed a rough track into the bush near me, and after winding around randomly in the dark, I arrived at a dead end in a she-oak patch. This was it: operation dense penetration would have to begin here at 20:50 hours.
Not only was there no moon, it was cloudy as well. Yep, dark. I've forgotten whether there was an eerie wind, but I think it would be appropriate to add one in for effect. The signal from Charlie was coming from somewhere forwards. Or was it backwards? He was somewhere close - if only I could tell which way my arm was pointing.
I 'quipped myself up for this voyage of blackness. A dolphin torch in one hand as a backup and spotlight and small torch in the other. In the another hand I held the antenna, and in the other hand I held the receiver - which seemed to be behaving erratically and needed cradling. [Unwittingly, I had combined a faulty antenna with a new receiver and vice versa, so had successfully created two non-working units.] I took a GPS reading of the car, and then opened all the doors and turned the hi-fi up as loud as it could go. Surrounded by cheap disco music, operation dense penetration was underway.
After 100 metres of dense sedge and she-oak thicket, I encountered a fence. Could this be private land? Hmm, no matter. The land over the other side of the fence seemed clearer and I headed down into a cleared path covered in thick sedge which appeared to be a creek line. The signal appeared to be coming from both far and near, as the lead in the antenna connected and disconnected from the socket. After trampling 500m into the soft spongy creek line, I still had no idea whether Charlie was any closer or further away. I tried to spotlight him on my left, but the trees were just too complicated. He could have been 20m away or 100m. I've failed to find him in a single tree standing in the open. There were trees with hollows everywhere. For all I knew, he could have been in one of them, dead. (Cue sudden orchestral music. Shudder..)
I just had the feeling that the signal had moved at some point. Maybe something had followed me as I stumbled in the dark. When I got back to the car, the signal still seemed to be coming from the same direction - or now even two directions. I wasn't sure of anything. I'd been driving and stomping for 9 hours, so I called it a day.
The next day, I managed to locate the cracked joints in the equipment and soldered them up.
When I arrived at Minnie Water on the second day, I went straight into the same tracks, hoping that he would be somewhere near. He was, and the signal seemed to be coming from the same direction again. When I got back to the same dead end in the track, the signal was coming from one of the two directions that it had been last night when I finished up. It definitely wasn't coming from the direction I first found him.
I stomped off through the thick bush in the direction of the signal and located an 11 metre high grey dead tree which was standing in a clearing. There was another stag nearby, but the signal was fairly unambiguously coming from the one in the clearing.
To kill some time before the creature arose, I went back to the creek line and identified the spot where I had given up. Ominously, the signal was still coming from exactly the same direction. I still had no clear evidence that he wasn't dead in the stump. What were the odds of that? Charlie is notorious for flying 3km to hunt. Had I bumped into him on a night where he had stayed within 50m of his roost tree?
19:15, I found an appropriate place to watch the stag. I applied aeroguard in all directions until I was coughing. It is a sad fact of life that mosquitoes peak in intensity about 8 minutes before a masked owl rises, so that just at the point when you need to keep quiet and still, you are dancing around and slapping your face.
I rested the antenna on an obliging oblongifolia and noted the exact intensity of the signal. It was a 6. At 19:30, a large bird flew off from the direction of the other stag. Another fact of life is that Kookaburras make a last move 5 minutes before a masked owl rises, and white throated nightjars start to fly. The signal was now at 5. Signs of life, or just random a perturbation? The signal returned to 6. It did this a few times.
Then the signal dropped to almost nothing. Yesssssss!!!! Canberra, we have life. A few seconds later, Charlie was up on top of the stag looking at me. The exit from the hole was of normal masked owl grace. That is, the kind of bang whap crunch you can't miss. About 30 seconds later, he flew to a nearby tree and did the morning stretch routine.
I gave him an hour to do something for an encore, and found that he had flown over 4km down to below Lake Hiawatha.
On the way home, I rewarded myself with an ice cream. I shouldn't have really because I have a low tolerance of dairy products. Actually, I didn't, but I think there needs to be a bad pun to justify the bad spelling in the title.
- Chris