After The Burn

IT was a grim view that greeted us as the Land Cruiser crested the ridge and started winding its way down the valley on the narrow dirt road. Ridgelines covered in the skeletons of burnt gums and mountain ash stretched to the horizon. They were stark reminders of the devastating bushfires that had torn through south-eastern Australia only months before, and we wondered what effect it had had on the local sambar deer that had drawn us to these mountains.

Later that night it was two weary hunters who pitched camp on the river flat after the long 10-hour drive from Sydney. Only a month previously John and I had made the trip south after sambar and had endured a week of tough but enjoyable hunting on the western side of the range, with John taking his first sambar, an old malformed stag. During the drive home we had already decided to go again as soon as time allowed, as the sambar bug had bitten hard during that first trip and we were both determined to return and secure a representative stag. This time we were trying a new area further east, recommended to us by