SSAA NSW

Sporting Shooters Association of Australia (NSW) Inc. 4 After an hour of quiet walking I shoot a rabbit that freezes in plain view. I think about the evolutionary disadvantage of having defences that can't possibly work against the only predator that kills at a distance. I skin and dress the warm rabbit, thinking how similar its anatomy is to mine: heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, intestines, bones, muscles, skin and blood. I bury all the organs, the head and the feet: dust to dust, but via whatever animal digs them up during the night. On the way back to the house I startle another rabbit. It bolts through the scrub and I follow, quickly and quietly. At the edge of a clearing I stop, and not ten metres away a swamp wallaby sits up warily. But I haven't left the trees and my human shape is disguised. I slowly raise the rifl e and look at him through the scope: his dark face looks straight at me, thick black fur shot through with gold. A few seconds and he has had enough, drops his head and bounds off in the peculiar fl at gait distinctive to his kind. As the eastern sky lightens, a pair of gang-gang cockatoos fl y through the eucalypts branches, their creaking call like a rusty hinge. Michael Adams – Hunter of the Year: Member Submitted (SSAA Illawarra) SSAA NSW Adult Hunter of the Year (Personal Experience) Nomination The perfect day for a hunt An hour before dawn, a hard frost. Orion is rising in the eastern sky, Scorpio sinks in the west. Orion is the Hunter, coming with his dogs, Canopus Major and Minor, and Sirius, the dog star. As Orion and the dog stars rise, dingoes howl from the dark mountains that bound the eastern horizon. I load the magazine, put it in my pocket, and step quietly out of the house with the rifl e.

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