“Is it illegal to bow hunt in South Australia” is a common question circulating the internet at the moment. At the time of writing this article, it is perfectly legal to bow hunt on private property providing you have the land holders permission and the appropriate permit.

However this could change very quickly!

The current Minister for the Environment, Susan Close has confirmed that she intends to ban bow hunting simply because she does not agree with the practice and is heavily influenced by the RSPCA. 

The Minister has expressed she would like to see South Australia align with many of the other States and Territories that have banned bow hunting. Clearly the Minister has been ill-informed as currently Tasmania is the only State to have outlawed bow hunting. 

The Minister has also said she would like to follow through with her pre-election promise to ban bow hunting. However, this commitment cannot be found published anywhere, including on Premier’s website which details the government’s policy commitments before the election.

http://www.instagram.com/p/CUhVPuVF5vC/

Clearly the information put forward by the Minister and the RSPCA is dramatisation at its finest designed to tug on the heart strings of the uneducated.

When looking at images used  by the RSPCA  and Susan Close to push this agenda it is clear this is not the work of a hunter.

The most obvious sign these images have no connection to hunting is the arrows / bolts are field tips. Field tips are clearly designed for target archery and no ethical hunter on this planet would use them to harvest game.

Secondly, most of the animals in the photos are either protected or not a targeted species of bow hunters. 

Something that is already illegal like killing protected species can’t be more illegal by banning bow hunting.

The simple facts are:

The Minister has no intention of actually speaking to experts who are educated about bow hunting.

Susan Close has clearly made uninformed decisions and straight out lied about election promises.

The RSPCA are happy to push the anti hunter agenda, yet support using in-discriminative 1080 poison all over our National parks.

It has taken me over 12 months to get my 6.5 Tikka CTR up and running. I decided early into the setup to move on my Leupold Mark 4 and upgrade to a Mil/Mil scope in first focal plane.
After selling the Mark4 which was moved on quickly thankfully, it took me a couple of months research to come up with the best bang for buck optic.

My requirements were pretty simple

• Mil reticle with Mil turrets
• First focal plane
• 20x zoom or above
• At least 50mm Objective
• Under $2000.00 AUD

As discussed in my video above there were really only three scopes in the running

• Vortex Viper PST Gen2
• Vortex Strike Eagle
• Meopta Optika 6

I decided to go with the Vortex viper. The strike eagle was a very close second, however after reading some reviews the viper is slightly better optically and some noted some of the strike eagles had spongy turrets. The Meopta Optika also caught my eye until it caught my eye! That knurling is way too big on the zoom adjustment, so much so that I just couldn’t move past it.

A worthy mention is the Nightforce SHV however it tops out at a maximum zoom 14x which just doesn’t suit my needs. I also loved the look of the Burris XTR but again was outside my budget.

Making the most of the recent good weather I decided an early morning Monday hunt was on the cards. I set off early to one of my great calling locations situated on the bank of a creek. This particular location has a fantastic view of the creek bed which is fed by a small natural spring and contains plenty of great fox hidey holes.

I got comfortable and started calling away on my rabbit distress Tenterfield and it didn’t take long for a fox to emerge.

I spotted the fox on the distant hill side and it started to trot on in, however this time it was different to usual. The fox made it to the side of the creek around 300 yards away and stopped dead in its tracks. The fox sat with its ears pricked up on the opposite creek bank staring across the other side. Initially I thought it had either seen or winded me, however the wind was in my favour and it was not staring at me. I gave a few more softer callers on the Tenterfield but it would not budge.

What could be wrong?

After around 10 minutes of the fox sitting there in a suspicious state it moved back to the standing position and barrelled in towards my location. Once it reached within 100 yards I took the shot and killed the fox.

On my way to inspect the kill, I couldn’t understand what made him freeze like that? Whilst walking towards the kill site I spotted tracks directly in front of me on a ledge out of sight of my calling position. It dawned on me, he was watching another fox between my position and himself! Doing some later reading on the subject, it seems foxes are very territorial and the fox I was watching was waiting for the dominant fox to move on before crossing into its territory.

You can see the fox prints on the ledge in the below photo followed by fox scat along side cow scat.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BwiWWP_hMFb/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=d49mhvvjczyz