I found myself unexpectedly in Albury 3 weeks ago, at the same time as my brother (which is, looking at the odds, some kind of miracle). Even more unlikely, his partner and daughter were out of town for a couple of days. Somehow, Torren and I had just found the freedom to get into the hills together for the first time in a long time.

It had been more than a few months since I last shot anything related to my personal project around hunting, so I was very keen on the idea of an overnight hunt in the hills with Toz, his Vizsla puppy, Lulu, and his cousin-in-law (is that a thing?), Heath. Especially as I'd never had the opportunity to document bow hunting.

I didn't even flinch at the 5am call time. While I would try and pass that off as eagerness, combined with a newfound maturity, it's definitely just a bi-product of a growing frequency of very early mornings. But I have to say that 5am is much nicer outside of the cities.

My next realisations came when we started the hunt. When you're stalking through the forest, in search of a deer species that is allegedly one of the smartest and hardest to hunt in the world, it pays to be silent. My camera shutters are not silent in the slightest. Then again, neither was Lulu. But she's only 6 months old, she can't be expected to not crash through the bush for 9 hours straight.

Now, rather than get too in depth with the details of the hunt, I think it will suffice to say that, although 24 deer were spotted, including 8 stags, 24 deer lived healthily past that trip, thanks to a combination of being out of distance for a bow, or a rifle jamming. That said, Heath and I both learnt some new tricks about tracking Sambar deer, and I got a good dose of bush before my return to the city.