How to get up to go hunting

Press, 8 April 1978, Page 14

How to get up to go hunting

As the season approaches, BEN HOPE has some advice for would-be shotgunners.

Ont of the biggest bugbears of a keen hunter, fisherman. or shooter is ha ving to get up at 4 am. or 5 am., depending on whether it is winter or sununer. There are the unbearable fellows who leap enthusiastically out of bed, and greet the early morning with a nerve-shatter-ing shout. Such types are hardly human and, at the least, must be regarded as eccentric. These same types are

almost certain to be the ones who take cold showers. deliberately take exercise, talk ninety-to-the dozen while his companions are still in a Uearyeyed stupor, and talk eighty-eight to the dozen, on the drive back home, when everyone else is too tired to argue back, But for the average mortal who fishes or hunts, it requires considerable forethought and planning to get up in the early morning. One school

of thought sets clocks ahead and alarms back, thus kidding themselves into thinking they are getting up at 6 a.m. This makes one feel a lot better, as if you think it is 6 a.m. when it actually is 5 a.m. you are in turn, likely to kid yourself that you are feeling pretty good. Basically and ethically this method is not desirable. If you use this system, you begin the day as

both the swindler and swindled. Another school of thought trains members of the family to get them up. Threats of penalties and offers of rewarding payments may have to be employed to make this work. It is good because it promotes family discipline. Offspring who later may go fishing or shooting may be trained to rise efficiently at 5 a.m. There is a third school erf thought, which com-

prises the majority. We simply turn the alarm off at 5 am. with a sleepy supposition that it is raining in the hills. This is a pretty good method. You get a couple of hours extra sleep and you inconvenience only your hunting companions. Eventually your hunting mates will wake you up about 7 a.m. either by ringing or by battering on the door. When you greet them, refreshed by your extra hours of sleep, just

hope that it' actually did rain in the hills. Otherwise you may not be asked to go hunting again. This sytem is pretty old-fashioned. Politicans in the capital city and in our local bodies have been using it for decades. The other day we went deerstalking. I think all of us must have used the third method of ranging the alarm button down, and going back to sleep. We did not start until 8 a.m. Fortunately, everyone

used the correct system. The fog was thick and low, and about mine o’clock it lifted. Fresh deer sign was everywhere. In my haste to get out of bed and dressed, I forgot my compass, map, and any com-mon-sense I had when I went to bed the night before. I ended up in a thicket of stinging nettle, just got out of that, and blundered into a gully of supple-jack entanglements.

I heard cattle bellow on the farmland adjoining and from the intricate maze of bush lawyer, supplejack and stinging nettle and ridges and gorges running in every direction, I took off in its direction. I assumed the cattle beast was on the farm we had come through. It was a brilliant piece of bushcraft. The only thing wrong was that the cattle belonged to another farm, three miles away. The mistake was dis-

covered when a nasty shadowy gorge appeared, where no nasty shadowy gorge should have been. I was a couple of miles from where I meant to be. By the time I got back to where I should have been, it was near midday. My companions did not fare much better. One of them saw the rump patch of a disappearing hind. The other saw nothing. So ended deerstalking for the day.

We had an hour’s drive back to town. There certainly is a good deal to be said for the method of arising we employed. In our case because of fog; we lost nothing but gained two extra hours’ sleep. But I feel a much better system of getting up in the morning nuld be conceived. If a good keen man used the right system he could stay in bed all day.