One of my young troops is a shooter. I say shooter because his idea of "Hunting" is driving around a paddock, drinking beers and shooting from his vehicle.

He's thinking about taking a posting to Katherine in the NT and was asking me some questions about hunting up there. One question was how hard is it to get permission to hunt on the stations. I told him its the same as everywhere BUT if he presents himself well and drive out to meet some of the property owners then he may get permission.

He then said "But because the properties are so big that if you just drove onto a place no one would know"

I told him if he got caught poaching he would be screwed, but I get the impression he would do it any way.

He's dropped a few hints about me giving him some contacts. There is no bloody way I would put him in touch with any of my mates up there.

Smart move.

We can only hope he doesn't breed.

In thirteen years in the area, I've lost access to two properties because of misdeeds by guys like him - as told me by the owners / managers, quite apologetically. The first incident was a mob of brolgas that got massacred by a large group of uninvited folks. The second incident involved the massacre of buffalo in a place where we were all meant to hunt sparingly for meat. Many years went by, and I now live in that country, and it is so good to see the buffalo back. That said, most servicemen are top blokes.

long way from NT/OZ.
I had a high dollar horse ranch a few miles from home that let me shoot prairie dogs among the $30,-100,000 horses with my .223. Those days I almost never missed so they wanted me to come back more often than I could get there.

The last time I went back the same ranch mgr. told me: "some jerk stopped on the highway and fired a few and one hit the horse barn when the boss was in it, no more shooting on the whole ranch". Some over 30,000 acres.

It just takes one jerk to ruin the whole game for everyone. You made a good decision, now just let your friends know this guy is likely to show up so they can watch for him.

George