I've just returned from a few days on Flinders Island, in Bass Strait, between mainland SE Ausralia and Tasmania with a small group chasing Cape Barren Geese.
Here's a few pics:
Typical of the countryside the geese graze, where we find whatever cover we can to wait in – ditches, thistles etc. The geese tend to fly low, so their flight paths are shaped by trees, landscape etc.
“Rockjaw” doing the rounds on the quadbike, off to stir some more birds up to drive over us.
A skein of geese about to come in low and hard over the thistles I was using for cover on one particular morning. Note the ti-tree scrub to the left: the geese will normally come around them, rather than gain elevation and go over.
In a drainage ditch across a paddock, Jim waits…
…for these geese, which landed just short into a stiff breeze, to graze their way into range (and then misses!)
Steve was right under this mob
My first goose for the trip and the gun and cartridges which brought it down: 1880 W&C Scott toplever hammer single 10g 2 7/8”, 3 ľ dr 2F pushing 1 3/8oz #2 or BB (same one I re-browned a year or two back). 10g guns and BP are few and far between here, so the boys enjoyed the novelty of hearing and seeing that distinctive, chesty boom and plume of smoke from a "big" gun!
Obligatory artfully arranged gun and goose detail…
For scale; gun has a 34” barrel
Patches of remnant ti-tree habitat provide shelter for peacocks…
[img]http://i606.photobucket.com/albums/tt146/cadet450/11_zps2ef862cf.jpg[/img]
…like this young cock bagged by Will; Jim took another; Tony a double.
I wish I'd managed a peacock; compounded by the fact that we were given some tips about when and how to find them, but broke early – but that’s a lesson learned for the next time.
I wish I'd put the gun down just once and took up the camera to get a photo of geese coming in low and hard, then flaring at 5-10m when I rose to take the shot.
Apart from that, it was a ripper of a trip.