In our members' own words
IN THEIR OWN WORDS...MEMBERS TELL THEIR STORIES
Gathering food and escaping stress...
PICTURED ABOVE: Richelle and her non-hunting dog, Rogue. Her main objective as a hunter is food gathering.
By APDHA member Richelle
How did I start hunting?
Well it was the usual story – my partner got into hunting, and somehow I ended up getting dragged into it too.
He came home one day and told me he ‘’accidentally’’ spent some money on hunting gear only to give me his bow a week later so he could have an excuse to upgrade his bow.
At first, I didn’t know how I would feel about killing an animal. But the more education I got, the more I ended up falling in love with the lifestyle.
As someone who was born overseas, I never knew that these game animals were considered as pests in Australia.
I recently hunted a friend’s farm, camped by his lake and watched him start work before sunrise and well beyond sunset planting crops only to see these ‘’bastards’’, as he called the pigs, destroy the crops not long after.
It was so upsetting and infuriating that it fuelled my drive to hunt.
For me, hunting is mainly about harvesting the meat.
I love food so much, and it feels so empowering to be able to harvest your own food while undertaking pest control.
How good does it feel to get ‘’free’’ meat while inflation is driving up food costs?
I am so ready for COVID lockdown 2.0. Remember when the meat shelves in the supermarket were empty?
But even when I don’t get to harvest meat, I still enjoy the bush.
As a critical care nurse, often times I need to wind down from all the traumas I witness at work and somehow escape the excessive text messages I get from work asking me to do overtime due to the national shortage of nurses.
So being off-grid and not having reception is such a treat.
I also spent most of my childhood in the flat desert of Western Australia prior to moving to New South Wales and so, I really do enjoy and appreciate the stunningly green, hilly bush of NSW.
I love pig hunting so much.
I do hunt deer, goats and other game species too, but pig hunting has to be my absolute favourite.
From my very minimal experience of bow hunting pigs, I feel that all your other senses come first before your sight.
You can often smell them in close proximity first before seeing them, and then you start hearing movements in the thick blackberry bush and start to see the silhouette of the pig munching on blackberries as you stand three metres away waiting and hoping for them to come out of the bush.
And when it comes to your sight, it’s usually indirect sight.
You see a tree shake in zero wind and realise it’s moving because there’s a pig underneath scratching its butt against it.
Pig hunting is undeniably so much fun and stalking them is such a joy.
When they have their snout deep in the soil or mud, their tunnel vision focussed on finding food, you know the hunt is on.
Maybe I love pigs so much because I can relate to them, because I love food so much.
One time I sent an arrow through a sow and a nearby pig that my partner had been stalking heard my sow but decided it needed two extra bites of the blackberries before eventually running away for its life.
How lucky are we to have come across this lifestyle.
I have a lot of hobbies;skydiving, surfing, rock climbing, spearfishing, snowboarding, but none are as versatile as hunting.
You don’t need to rely on the weather conditions as much to go hunting, and it’s a way of life – at least for me it is, as I harvest all the meat whenever I can.
Hunting is just so raw and ancestral and I really can’t wait to see my hunting journey unfold through the upcoming years.
PICTURED ABOVE: Richelle and one of her first pigs with the bow.
