Not a good start to the year.
 

I've been watching a red stag grow out in the velvet this year hoping to take him with my muzzleloader once he was hard.
Not sure if you've heard over that way but we've had massive fires in australia, particularly in the Grampians which is where I'm from.

I spent friday on a fire tanker battling the blaze trying to help save the area that I grew up in. At this stage only one person has died and between 10-25 homes lost as well as at least 8,000 sheep and cattle dead.

It's a very sad time, luckily my family didnt lose their house or livestock. Not sure how many deer could survive it either. Might be a rough season. The smoke was so bad it created its own storm clouds which produced lightning and more fire.

Here are just a couple of snaps I took when I had a chance off the truck.

Good to see communities getting together at these hard times though.

JP

Shoot! I hate disasters like that... they normally are so unexpected and occur so fast...

I am sorry to hear of the problems your community suffered. I wish all of you the best. Wildlife are usually pretty good about getting out of the way, but only time will tell. I wish you the best and hope all these problems go away soon.

That fire looks massive. I have read about the fires you are fighting in our papers lately.Stay safe.

Saw a little about it on the news jp, they covered the loss of dwellings, but if they covered anything about the loss of livestock I missed it. That's some terrible stuff. Stay safe man.

thanks guys,
I'm back at work now but got updated and it's almost contained.
There are far bigger issues obviously but from a hunting perspective its annoying as we were planning on picking our trail camera up on Saturday to see if we'd got the stag we'd been watching a bit. Guess we'll never know!

Man, that stinks. Hope you stay safe.