Senior hunters - age shall not weary then

by Alex Wyschnja
Australian Shooter December 2002

Pop first learned to shoot using a bolt action Mosin Nagant rifle (chambered in 7.62x54 rimmed) after being drafted into the Red Army, just before Hitler invaded his Ukraine homeland. To say that he has led an interesting life would be an understatement. He was sent to the frontline as a medic and endured the Nazi blitzkrieg known as operation Barbarossa in June 1941. Poorly equipped and led, he tells the bizarre story of the orders given to the battlefront Soviet troops that were along the lines of ‘Don’t shoot at the Germans because they might shoot back!’ With that sort of winning strategy, Stalin’s mighty Red Army was rapidly overrun.

Dad, along with hundreds of thousands of other defeated soldiers, was rounded up at gunpoint and railed to Germany to endure the remaining war years as a disposable slave labourer for the desperate German war machine. He was very lucky to survive this harrowing experience but was in the unique position of witnessing the German defeat by the US Army, which liberated him and his fellow prisoners of war. After the War he was among the many thousands of displaced people who migrated to Australia to help build this great country. Settling in South Australia, he drove steam trains for the railways before taking up farming near Cowell on the Eyre Peninsula.

My earliest recollection of shooting and firearms was in the very early 1960s when Dad bought a 1957 Brno Model 2 .22 rimfire to thin out the ever-increasing kangaroo, rabbit and fox population on the farm. We would scour the paddocks at night in our old, short wheelbase Landrover with the windscreen folded down. Mum would be driving and catching while Dad would hold the spotlight and the trusty .22 loaded with ICI Civic hollow points, ready to wreak havoc on the local bunny population. My brother and I would sit in the back and hold on for dear life, particularly if we spotted a fox, cat or kangaroo and mum gave chase. Most nights, Dad would shoot each rabbit through the head using open sights. We would always come home late at night with the back of the Landrover full of warm, fluffy rabbits. These were boiled up in an old laundry copper drum the next morning and thrown to the chooks, which went into a feeding frenzy on the steaming carcasses.

Pop taught me to shoot with the .22 when I was six years old. Along with the marksmanship skills, the most important thing he taught me was to never point the gun at anything unless it was to be shot and to treat all guns as being loaded. Firearms are a way of life in the country and particularly on farms.

Later Dad bought an old full wood SMLE .303 and to a young kid this was a real thunderstick. With it he got a couple of packets of Riverbrand soft point bullets. My first shot as a kid with the .303 was unforgettable and we had fun digging the copper projectiles out of the dam embankment. As I grew older he started to trust me with with the .22 and any galahs that were foolish enough to perch on the trees around the house didn’t last long. (I still have the old Brno, now topped with a Leupold scope and my wife and three children also learnt to shoot with it.)

In the early 1970s farming took a downturn and we moved to the city. Shooting started to become just a fading memory for Dad. As my brother and I grew older and more independent, we continued to pursue our own interests with firearms and hunting, including semi-professional fox shooting, and it was natural to invite Dad along, as he was always the ‘master’.

Pop rediscovered himself as a hunter some 20 years ago when he began joining us on numerous occasions to shoot feral goats on Paney (now a National Park) and Hiltaba stations in South Australia’s Gawler Ranges. He started using scoped rifles chambered in all sorts of exotic calibres (compared to the old farm .303) such as .222, .22 magnum, .243 and 6.5x55. He also had a fondness for the now banned SKS carbine with its fast handling characteristics and open sights for close range scrub shooting. The best billy he shot had a spread of 35 inches; the mounted horns still hang in his hallway as a reminder of those memorable hunts. At that stage of life he started having problems with his eyesight and I remember him missing a big black billy in the scrub at a range of about ten metres. Something was drastically wrong. His fitness and enthusiasm to hunt was still fine of course. A trip to an eye specialist confirmed that he had cataracts and the miracles of modern eye surgery soon cured the condition.

One thing he never got around to was pig shooting, so after much encouragement he made the commitment to give it a go early this year. He was starting to slow down and at 80 years of age we had to make sure he wouldn’t get too stressed. His days of tramping the hills with us chasing goats were over, but the outback station in NSW where we hunt pigs is nice and flat and would be relatively easy going for him. The best way for him to get a pig would be to stake out a dam and wait for the hogs to come in for water rather than walk them up in the lignum and boxthorns.

He hadn’t fired a rifle for some time so on the first day my brother Peter took him out for some practice with the 243, which barks a bit, but is very easy on the shoulder. Fitted with a scope and bipod for stability and firing accurate, tailor-made handloads, Pop soon got back into the swing of things. It was obvious that not many pigs would get away from this veteran hunter. The station hands called up on the UHF radio; they had spotted a small mob of goats near where Pop was practising. Dad had the pleasure of culling the mob, which was easy work since they were out on the flat plains.

After relaxing under a fan in the shearers’ quarters to avoid the heat of the day, it was time to venture out to check a dam just before dark. The hogs seemed to be active at this time of the day and muscled their way in before the thirsty cattle came to drink. Dad was keen to get a steady rest and take his pigs with one shot to the head. I gave him first drop on the mob of hearty ferals; his steady shot just as they began to drink was good and the 100-grain Hornady Interlock hit his first pig just below the ear. Pigs ran in all directions and I followed up with some frantic lever action from my .30-30. After congratulations and photos, we went ‘pig fishing’ to drag the carcasses out of the dam. After dark, I hooked up a hand held Lightforce spotlight and blasted a fox that came over the dam wall to sniff the dead pigs. The .30-30 is one mean fox gun at close range. Pop was lucky enough to bag another couple of medium hogs before we returned to the camp for tea.

We went spotlighting foxes and rabbits every night and Dad was happy to sit in the front of the ute to watch the action. He wasn’t really interested in shooting foxes; he was bitten by pig hunting fever.

We repeated our successful routine the following night at a different dam. Again Dad used the .243 to deadly effect and took a couple of good-sized boars with single shots to the head. His tactic was to let the animals settle down and then get a steady rest to take maximum advantage of the accuracy of the rifle.

On the last evening of the trip he decided to give my .308 a try. This rifle has considerably more recoil than the .243, but do you reckon that would have bothered someone who cut his teeth on a Mosin Nagant carbine? A monster boar sidled silently out of the boxthorns and trotted towards the circular cattle trough, which overflowed with clear, cold water. The boar was like Burke and Wills at the dig tree - nothing else mattered except a drink. The .308 roared and Pop’s best boar taken for the trip hit the hot, dry dust and kicked no more. A few minutes later another smaller sow emerged and he tried to take it on the run. His rushed shot missed and the lucky hog bolted back into the thick bush. It didn’t matter; he was rapt simply to now be a member of the ever-growing fraternity of successful pig hunters. We are planning to invite him on an outback feral camel hunting expedition soon; he might just surprise everyone and decide to come along.