On the hunt

Seeking a direct connection with what they eat, these hunters are turning away from packaged meat to stalk wild animals in Victoria’s forests.

High on Cass Fleming’s bucket list is a desire to find hidden treasure while scuba diving.

She also loves the thrill of a bargain hunt in a country op shop.

So it’s no surprise, she says, to find her one wintry Friday morning on another kind of hunt.

With a rifle slung over her shoulder, she abandons the safety of a gravel track and walks into thick scrub in Victoria’s High Country.

Cass is on the hunt for sambar deer. It’s a long way from her desk in Melbourne where she works in IT.

There are several species of deer in Victoria and sambar is one of the most common. It’s also the largest.

“Sambar deer are regarded as being difficult to hunt, so there’s a sense of having to actually work for it,” Cass says.

As well as her rifle, Cass carries her phone, a paper map and a GPS.

She traces her movements as she heads for a vantage point in the forest.

There is no path and Cass must be able to find her way back to her car.

After walking for an hour or so, Cass has covered a mere 400 metres.

It’s slow going trying to tread silently over twigs and logs and not alert an animal with far superior senses.

If Cass manages to shoot a deer, she will butcher it on the spot and carry it out of the forest.

This can mean multiple physically demanding trips to her car and back, carrying kilos of meat over streams and up and down gullies.

For Cass, there’s pride in killing her own meat and in the skills she must master to take an animal’s life with an ethical shot.

Cass is part of what some in the hunting community say is a rising trend in people from the cities learning to hunt wild game, driven by an interest in self-sufficiency.

Cass has been hunting for less than two years, but as a long-range rifle shooter she was already familiar with firearms.

“I enjoyed the precision that [long-range shooting] takes and the patience that you need to have to get an accurate shot from quite a distance,” she says.

“Around the same time, I was thinking about the supply chain of food and where our meat comes from.”

When she discovered through friends in her rifle shooting club that Victoria’s forests were riddled with deer, she wanted to learn how to hunt them.

“I’ve always loved the bush, so it makes sense to me to spend more time in my favourite place.

“And if I can, at the same time, source some really delicious fresh meat, then that’s a real bonus.”

“Besides saving money by acquiring your own meat, you also get better-quality meat,” Wally says, adding that in Chinese culture there is a saying that venison is the best meat.

Wally also wants his children to grow up knowing where food comes from beyond supermarket shelves. And he finds meaning in the pursuit.

“I guess for me as a male, I would say to be able to provide for your family … when you give things out to your friends and family and say, ‘I shot this deer’, it’s like a story to tell and I think that’s the thing that’s missing in today’s world.”

One of the main challenges for new hunters is finding places to hunt, so Wally created a social media page that connects hunters with landowners who have feral animal populations.

Statistics show recreational deer hunting in Victoria is growing in popularity.

According to the Game Management Authority, game licences with an entitlement to hunt deer have risen from around 7,000 in the mid-1990s to nearly 50,000 in 2023.

The state government and the Invasive Species Council say deer pose a significant threat to the environment and the agricultural industry.

They are simultaneously viewed as a pest — and government money is put aside each year to control them — but they are also a designated game species protected under the Wildlife Act.

In his garage on the outskirts of Geelong, Chris butchers a leg of deer he killed and stored in his large, packed freezer chest.

Chris says he grew up spearfishing but became interested in hunting when he moved further from the ocean.

He says hunting and eating what he kills aligns with his core values and faith – Chris studied to be a pastor – to live healthily and consciously.

“I can go and buy meat from the supermarket and feed it to my kids, but I have zero knowledge of what’s in there, even if I read the back of it.”

“For me [hunting has] always been about food. I won’t ever go out and just shoot something for fun.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-02/deer-hunters-game-meat/103974062

Why I wondered is because .303 is greater in diameter than .308

Police say target shooting practice was behind an emergency declaration which briefly shut parts of the Bruce Highway north of Brisbane on Friday afternoon.

Emergency services responded to reports of shots fired on the Bruce Highway near Coles Creek on the Sunshine Coast, shortly after midday.

Police are currently speaking to people on a nearby property.

Afternoon punctuated by sirens
Simone Thompson was out fencing a few kilometres from the highway when she heard what sounded like gunshots.

She and her colleagues at the pet boarding house initially "joked" about gunfire.

But she said the afternoon had been punctuated by sirens.

"It's just been a barrage of police and sirens and helicopters are still circling over us,"  she said.
"They just have not stopped circling. They keep coming back and getting lower and lower."

Police set up road blocks after reports of shots fired near the Bruce Highway.

The earlier emergency declaration has been revoked, and the Bruce Highway has now reopened.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-09/police-responding-to-reports-of-shots-fir...

Long may silencers be banned in Australia for general use.
First, for safety, because gunshots are a warning to others in the area that shooting is taking place.

Don't silencers build up in carbon quickly?
I don't think snipers use them in Ukraine with constant use.

Interesting link, a bit out in in some observations but generally not bad, although some of their contentions are rather funny.
I note that they are open about silencers doing nothing to reduce ballistic crack, which is heard as the projectile passes and is heard distinctly until the bullet drops below the sound barrier..

Back in the day when silencers were freely available there was not much demand for them and I can only remember one brand being on.offer, possibly most people who wanted one made their own as continued as the laws tightened.

One great potential disadvantage of their widespread use is the firing of sub-sonic ammunition [which they do silence] in backyards and the consequent danger of unintended woundings or fatalities.