From: Carl Bisignano

Well, it's one of those stories that one would think borderlines on truth and untruth, but let me tell you readers the follwing is definitely true.

It was about 6am as we made our way through the township of Barmah, Victoria, (yeah what township). We were on our way to our favourite cod hole with the Toyota 4WD loaded with rods, bait and - yeah alright - our firearms (for hunting purposes only).

We were heading down the dry dusty dirt road when we saw what looked like a monster boar cross the track up ahead. So it was pedal to the metal as my mate Vince scrambled for the 303 and some shells in the locked box. Drawing closer and closer to the site, everything was quiet (surprise, surprise) but our curiosity got the better of us. I told Vince to get out of the 4WD and wait whilst I parked in a safe spot some few hundred metres up the track. Porker stalking at this stage became more important than cuddling cod.

In the time that I parked the car, grabbed my gun and headed to where Vince was, he was nowhere to be seen. I entered the thick scrub cautiously when I faintly heard the cries of "help, help, help". The voice was so close but yet so far. I heard a scrambling of leaves in the gum tree ahead of me and at first I thought it was a bird, but on a closer look I saw Vince in his cammo gear (yeah right, the daggiest fluro green workshirt I had ever seen). The bottom of this tree was not visible due to the thick scrub but I could only imagine that this so called boar would have had to have been huge to scare Vince up into the tree.

I approached the tree with caution and on a closer look it was no boar but the biggest bull I had ever seen. It had no interest in me as I screamed to get its attention (smart move Carl) but had only intentions of charging Vince and kicking up dust. I continued to get the bull's attention but no luck. The only attention this bull was going to get was a .22 grain bullet in his ass end. The bull was sent packing and so was was Vince apparently (he literally needed an underwear change). After fleeing from the tree we thought it would be a good idea to stick to fishing.

But this was not the end of our misfortune. Arriving at our fishing destination we set up our rods, and parked our butts still shaking from the morning's events... Vince had some trouble sitting of course. Vince found the ordeal all to much and started to nod off, and all that walking made me tired too.

We awoke an hour later only to find 2 out of the 4 rods we had set up still on the bank and a huge carp splashing in the water with our floater surfacing the water. I had never caught a carp in this part of the river for over 5 years... it just wasn't our morning.

(Posted: 1 April 2004)