A KANGAROO HUNT.

Bruce Herald, Volume II, Issue 44, 9 February 1865, Page 6

A KANGAROO HUNT.

(Froni the^j^bahe Courier.) The mail kajjoFroo as is well known, in pommon with^nany other gregarious animals, leads a very solitary life in his old age, retiring 11 from the cures and troi^bleg pi' kangaroo life "to some sequestered locality, generally in the neighborhood of a thick cover, to which ha can retreat in case of danger. The young- bucks, in fact, drive him gut of the herd, and force this unsocial iTalnt on him. The oltj. men ar.enot Very spe'e.dy ?! and as they get moody, and even:savag'e in solitude, they do not alVays care to essrt. the speed they possess. )l Jew days .ajro, while Qut'dack-s-hopUng Zienv the. Pineliiver,, I came~a.cross a very Inrg - c i old: man — •' a . regular hoomer. He iv.is stairdiri^i' erect' by the side of a large waterhole, and had evidently noted myjipproach. .Unfortunately,' l .had no dogs yvith mey and ; . .my gun .^yas.. churgea withJs r o 4 fc-hot. I. had ijpg-lecfed'iny usual pre--' caution, Av'hich. is. to. take with me two or ilnre 1M0.2 car.trujgeS .'to jneet such- em'eriivncies, ' ll ey-lroweVeiy allowed me to get .\v.\£'iin ;. long range v pf In in, [in.dl blazed Vyvyrty l>pth^iav^is'nie^ectu,all^.t^e:ojtl;.ifel-: snvay' ; a§ v unconcernellly' as?ii

ho enemy were in sig-lit. Upon followingjiip \,\w game, I became convinced,- from ! the numerous large tracks in -the neighbourhood of a tea -tree swamp to which lie retreated, that the old man was in his rejgular haunt, and that I should be pretty sure of finding him there or thereabouts whenever I chose to look for him, the more so as there was a very inviting piece of burnt f.e.pd close by, to which kangaroos lire especially partial- I accordingly resumed my duck-shooting-, and gave the old man a respite for four days, Avh,en I started again— this time on horseback with three good dogs. I got on the ground at about four o'clock in the afternoon, by which time as I expected, the old man had left his cover and was feeding on the flat. •We found him almost at once, on a piece of open ground, where h a gave us a capital start, and the dogs being very fresh, we overhauled him after a run of less than a quarter of a mile. Finding himself cut off by the scrub and bailed up by his pursuers, he made for a waterhole in the middle of thft flat, into which he plunged, and the three dogs alter him. The water being about seven feet deep, it was as much as he could do to keep his head clear, and ip this position he stood at bay when I came up, the hole being about twenty feet across Leaving fiiy horse to look after himself, I rushed to the scene of action, ' and found the old man in the center of the hole, my old dog* Presto sitting 1 on the bank on one side bleeding from a deep cut in the throat, but evidently bent on further mischief, and the two 3 r oung dogs swim-ming-round the old man and barking at him. I barkened them on at once, upon which Presto immediately swam out and made a savage attack on the enemy, and returned again, half drowned to take breath. The pups then went in at him aud fought well until the old man got. one of them under watei?, and would very soon have suffocated her,' as I could give no as-., sistance from the bank with the short stick which I had hurriedly picked up. I now thought it was high time to interfere, and as tlje.ve was only one way to save the dog I plunged into the water (1 had not even time to take off my coat), and getting a firm grip of the reeds, just succeeded in getting a footing, with the water over my shirt collar. This created a diversion in! favor of Flora, \yho swam out bleeding from a hole in her side, inflicted by the clawsJof the old mnn as lie hfrld her under wateji*. He now turncc'l his attention to me and the dogs — with th" exception of Zoe, who escaped with a few scratches, and who continued to swim round the kangaroo — seeing that I had taken the affair in m} own *" hands, contented themselves with, watching the fight. There we stood, the old man with his head just out of the water, in the middle of the h?le, and I with my head just out of water,, about six 'or eight feet from him. I could not get nearer to him, because it was out of my depth, and the old man only approached me when I made a blow at him, when he would make a rush to close quarters and his paws and my sheoak -apling would scatter the water in every direction, the : blpws not being very effective on either side on account of the depth of the water in-'which we stood. There was a large dead log 1 , which lay across the waterhole «t one end, and thinking I should perhaps be able to get firmer fooling on the other side, 1 got on it to cross over, and in m} r haste, when about half, way over, made a false step and went in headfirst. Luckily i'ot me the old iron did not improve the .opportunity, for if he had closed with me then he would have had a decided advantage, and I might have come to grief. The large inside pockets of my shooting jacket which I had been in too much of a hurry to cast-off, held such a quantity of water that I was more incommoded than I need linvG been. There, was n. good deal of dead timber on the side I had noiv reached, and after dodging about for some little time I managed to get within fighting distance of the enemy, in such a position that, although still up to my neck, I had a good level bottom under me, and a firm crip of a. branch of the said log about a foot be;low the surface. The first hloW brought the old man within a foot of me, when I sucfpeded in making, such good use of my snpjing that I soon rendered him ' hors de combat.' .When, as I was about to -give him the ' coup de grace' Presto, who could stand it no longer, made a final plunge at rhe old maTi's throat, and suclr^s'cuffie, ''splashing, and' growling; eiisueW 7 .::thit; the. whole wateVnble ! was 'distorts ""'hrV r it^tfie

dying rstrengtU of .the boomer being', prodigious. Then both thedog and the lean- j o% : u-bd disappeared, and "die next moment Presto swam out alone, streaming* with blood, and la j down on tlie ' r,eeds to reco- ' yer himself. The kangaroo,' after his game defence, had sunk— and' the worst of it was that he sank in ,4 ee P "water, and I could not feel him anywhere, although I poked about the bottom of the bole for at least a quarter of an hour. Determined not to be baulked in this way, I stripped and dived down several times until I ascertained his whereabouts, when by me ins of a hookfid sapling 1 , which I cut with my hunting' knife, I succeeded with a great effort in getting" him ashore. My labors were however, not yet over. I had to get him home. The difficulty was to put him across the sackile, and I think I never worked harder than I did for about twenty minutes in vain efforts to effect that object. For although I had taken out the entrails, the body was such a dead weig-ht that with my u'tmo-t strength, I could, barely raise it a few inches from the~ ground. I rode back to the road, which was nearly- a mile distant, in hopes of seeing some one whose assistance I might be able to obtain, but no one was in sight.; the sun was going down, and the dogs would not leave the water-hole without tlie old man. I was also determined to get him home whole, anil finally hit upon an expedient which succeeded. By dragging him along for some little distance, I managed to get him on the bank of a dry waterhole where 1 conld place the horse on ground nearly three feet lower, and so I got over the difficulty;, and contrived to get safely home with my booty about an hour after dark. Thus ended a capital day's sporD, which has given me as finfi a skin as I have had for' a long time, a tail weighing nearly twenty pounds, and a pair of prodigious hams, to say nothing of the saddle, which, when cooked like veal, with stuffing and some rich gravy, is a dish which, I can assure yo.i, is not to be despised. I had no means of ascertaining the exact weight of the kangaroo. I have larger ones, but never one that afforded & better day's spore. The skin when pegged out on a gum tree measured exactly eight feet six inches.