HI Everyone.

Well i have been out in the bush a bit the last few weeks. Last days off Richard came to visit and we went out both Thurs and Fri to try and find something for Rich to shoot. On the Thursday we headed to a river a bit south where i have often seen deer.
We got up early and told Rachel (Rich's wife) we should be home by 3-4pm at the latest. As i was leaving the car at 7am i took my torch out of my bag. We had 12hrs of daylight left and were only planning on being in the bush for about 6 of them. I can guess you know where this story is going about now. So we walked quietly around the bush for a few hours (well one of us was walking quietly, the other was trying to snap every stick, branch and tree he could reach). We scared up a couple of deer but not close enough to shoot. About 2pm we heard a stag roaring up on the hill above us. We decided to climb up and see if we could spot him. It was a steep nasty slope/cliff we climbed up and both Rich and myself were sweating like pigs by the time we got near the ridge. (when i say pigs i mean i was sweating like one pig and Rich like 3 or 4). Rich was a little worried about getting home to Rachel but as soon as we spotted sign he was keen to head in the away from the car direction. We scared up a group of deer but did not get a chance of a shot so started heading down the hill. The way down was much easier the the way we came up, which was a good thing cos we only had an hour or so of light left. We headed towards the edge of the bush but came out at the top of a 100ft cliff that dropped off to the river flats. We were walking as fast as we could through the bush trying to find a way down the cliff. There were a number of small gullies that we had to climb down into only to find that the creek at the bottom dropped off a 50ft or so watter fall to the flats. Then we would have to climb up the other side of the gully and keep on moving. By the time we finally found one we could climb down it was well and truly dark under the trees. We got home about 745pm and Rachel meet us at the door in tears. She thought we were lying dead in the bush somewere. The worst thing was she had gone into my work to tell them I was lost in the bush. I got sooooo much shit my next day at work. I would have been ok if we had actually got something.

The next day we went to a different place and again got close to deer but still not shot. I did see some pretty flowers though. I am having problems with the macro feature on mu cam. It does not want to focus on close ups. The first photo was of me seeing if it would work with a closer back ground. I was not trying to get it to focus on my face but on that blurry flower in front. Rich was more than happy to let me shot flowers cos he was looking a little worse for wear after all the hills i made him grovel up.


I was back out in the bush today and got really close(20-15m) to a large stag but was not able to get a clear shot at his head. I had a lovely view of his bum but not his head. Then he got wind of us and bolted. It is very cool being in the bush. You get to see and hear some very interesting birds and plants. I saw some very funky fungi today but was in the middle of chasing deer so did not get a photo of it.

Cheers
Malc