Oh, the humidity

Last couple of weekends have been spent on hunting related stuff. Sunday of last weekend we had a swamp working bee to get a few maimai repairs done, chop firewood and spray back the willow primrose. That nasty stuff's had a ball of a growing season; obviously the wetter summer has had an affect because the growth was hideous. I've never seen it before quite like this; thick mats had grown out.

Individual strands...

Choking mats

A few hours of careful intensive spraying, hopefully it'll knock most of it over. Recovering from a bout of norovirus, the heat didn't agree with me so slept well that night.

The current weekend was set aside for the annual summer paradise duck special season. A few weeks ago while goose hunting we'd been buzzed by hundreds of post moult parries; but they'd mostly dispersed according to the boys. With a number of parties of the property and the adjoining one, we were sure that we'd be able keep the birds moving - we'd set a goose spread as well as having our paarie silhouettes out. A damp hot NE had set in over the past couple of days, and at 4am it was 21 Degrees and chokingly humid. A dark wet cloud lay over the land and stayed there as well lay in our layouts boiling away. It was really uncomfortable. The parries mostly avoided us, however Chewie Tony and I had reular shooting. The boys a couple of paddocks over had a great parrie decoy spread and they limited early before a new crew rotated into their spot. Finally at about 11 a westerly came up so the humidity was replaced by searing sunshine... Feb really is a tough time to hunt from a heat perspective.

Humid hunting... no socks allowed

 We finished up with close to limits, had a debrief with some of the locals and other boys and came to the conclusion that the cockies would be happy enough with our efforts. At least there'd be no parries crapping in their water troughs for a while; a couple of hundred had been harvested.

Round about now I'm looking forward to autumn. Hunting in the cool - that's more like it.