I've just come back from a week long chital hunt.
Brutal heat for the whole time, 43°C on the first day with the remainder of the time hovering in the low 40's to high 30's but that was the only downer although on the last afternoon I was the only one to get a drenching in a typical summer late afternoon storm. The other blokes were watching the storm and thinking to themselves 'Jeez, the Fox is going to get wet'...and he did..and that's all I got. No deer seen, they were smarter than me and undoubtedly had better cover too.

One of the blokes shot a nice stag around 26inches, I took a couple of hinds for the freezer, and one of the others clean missed a 30 incher at around 120m...he hasn't needed anyone to kick his arse, he's been pretty much preoccupied with kicking it himself.
Good company, good numbers of deer and good food resulted in a real good time.

Here's a few pics.

A bit of a breezeway on the side of the hut, coolest place in the camp.



No joy on the yabbies (crawfish).



Plenty of these buggers around the camp, they enjoyed the food too. The bigger ones were up around the 1.2 metre mark. It wasn't uncommon to get up in the morning and there were tail drag marks passing under my bed.



A small group of deer we saw on the way out, two young stags in velvet and four hinds.



One of the hinds I shot.



The rifle is a custom 260, Stiller action, Lilja bbl, Jewell trigger, McMillan Hunters Edge stock topped with a Kahles 3-9x in Talley lightweights.

Real neat photo of the doe, John. Tough weather to be hunting, eh.

Thanks for the hunt report. Looks like a good time. Nice to see reports on DIY hunts in other places.

I bet that hind will taste good! Better luck next time on the stags John!

Thanks for posting.
Hunting like I grew up with....somehow has got more " complicated" in recent years.
Need to get back to reality.
Cheers
Steve