ULTIMATE HUNT 1.
J.F.
As a project I have contacted a few friends of mine and asked them what they consider the best hunt they have ever had. Over the next few days I'll bring you their thoughts but first I'd like to tell you about mine. We'd hit the sack early the night before and we were in position by two hours before dawn. The tethered goat grazed quietly as the sun came up like thunder over the snow-topped mountains. Long shadows dappled the grass.
Suddenly he was there. Eighteen feet long from nose to tail-tip, not the dull yellow of his earth ancestor but bright orange between the midnight black stripes. I cocked my antique Mauser and took aim. He heard me. That great head swung round and our eyes locked.
Everything froze. I thought I'd blown it. Then he sprang! Not away, not into the safety of the elephant grass but straight at me!
My bullet took him right between the eyes. What a magnificent beast! What courage!
For me the ultimate quarry is the kzin tiger of New Earth.
ULTIMATE HUNT 2.
J.F.
When Ed asked me to write a piece on my best hunt I got out my hunt records and sat looking through them with a pipe and a glass and a couple of friends to yarn and argue. It made a great evening. I know I've told you before how important it is to keep a record of each day in the field because that's how you learn. Years later you can be looking through the record and suddenly you understand why that day was lucky or unlucky, why some days you killed and other days you didn't. I often turn to one particular record, stare at it and try to understand why that day it worked.
My regular by-line says it all. They call me Kurt Monneker the Moonfish Man.
There are three of us in all the Galaxy. It was a bright day and that was against all the rules. They're called moonfish because the theory is you catch them at night. Well it was day and I could see them rising just outside the reef, taking pukoi fly as they drifted in from the mangroves. I had a light rig, a Donne and Bradstreet hyperfine rod with a mengistu centrepin reel and a .1kg line with whale oil dressing. I'd tied the lure that morning, the closest thing to the pukoi I could manage from Arcturan pheasant hackle and silver wire. I cast over those fish until my wrist ached. Sometimes they rose right beside my lure, took a real pukoi and dove back into the darkness. And then I made the perfect cast and it was taken like a tiger. He was less than a kilo but he fought like a demon. It took me an hour on that rig to get him over the reef and into the net. And I looked at that cunning eye and those mirrored silver flanks and I eased out the hook and I let him go.
Three of us have hooked the moonfish. All you have to do is get it right. Not near enough, not 99. Not 99.999. Right.
And when you do there's nothing like it.
ULTIMATE HUNT 3.
J.F.
The best hunt is when you cast away all civilisation and go after your quarry man to man. I was eighteen when I got my first snowbear. We'd trekked out into the New Rockies with backpacks and we bivouacked under the stars each night, living off wild trout and berries.
After a week we got onto his spoor and we tracked those pug marks for two days over the glacier before we got sight of him. He was a huge silverback, pugs as big as plates and big yellow teeth that looked six inches long when he turned and roared.
Then he charged.
I flicked open the Mellor sheath on my hip and the handle of my trusty old knife dropped into my palm. He was on me. I'd spent months training in VR but it's not the same when his hot fetid breath wraps round you and those huge claws reach to tear your heart out.
You get one chance, one strike with the knife. Otherwise when it says game over it means it. His eyes looked into mine as the blade struck home, surprised but understanding... yes, understanding what had happened. He fell like a rockslide. They had to pull him off me and it took three months for my ribs to heal. Man to man.
That's the way of the frontier. Man to beast. Eye to eye.
That's why we're frontiersmen.
ULTIMATE HUNT 4.
J.F.
The thing that makes the best hunt is when you trek, when you pursue. It's not the kill, it's the anticipation and the effort you have to put in before you get to the killing zone. That's why I always choose the big low density planets, places where the atmosphere is deep and the hills go on for ever. It took me years to work out that it's the size of the planet that gives you the winds the High Eagles need, the long reaches of ocean and plain where the gales build and stalk until they break on the mountains in vast eddies and upcurrents where the Eagles can soar and wait.
Trek in with your wings on your back. Find an upslope and strap into your kit and put the loop of your EG-46 around your wrist. Step off into space. The wind grabs you and whirls you up, the monolayer creaking under the G. Move sideways and you wheel and soar with the Eagles. Choose your quarry and stalk him through the long day with the bleak bare mountains below as you pursue and he flees. At last you close, you fly alongside him and he turns to rend you, to send you tumbling down through the empty miles below to smash in red ruin on the great heaving shoulder of his planet home. One shot as he turns those cold golden eyes to you, one shot into the gaping crimson beak. Follow him down, sideslipping through the clouds down to the rock where he lays.
Then, the only trophy of the day a feather from his tail tucked firmly into your belt, you set off back through the long slow twilight.
ULTIMATE HUNT 5.
J.F.
Maybe you'll notice this hasn't got any names in it. Well, there's a reason. The ultimate hunt for me is an illegal prey, illegal except on this one planet where they've outlawed inorganics and any that show are given one day to get out of town or face the consequences. You'd be surprised how often the droids decide to take the risk. They get kitted out and head for the hills with every hunter on the planet baying for their... well, you can't say blood can you? Oil maybe, that golden ichor they use instead of the red stuff.
I got my droid after it had killed ten men, ten experienced hunters with notches on their blasters. I'd holed up in a cave with a seep of smoke drifting downwind. I knew he'd smell me out. Two days it took him and I was nodding over my gun. He was unarmed I knew, damaged by the last man who'd died under his fists. A falling stone alerted me too late.
Desperately I tried to raise my gun but his hand struck like a snake. He tore my gun out of my hand and he turned my own weapon onto me. Without a pause he flicked off the safety and fired.
OK, so it was a sneak trick, but you can't take chances with a 'droid. It's the kill that counts. The bullet exploded out the back of the gun and blew his glass head to shards. Droids. They're fast, they're mean. They know what it's going to be like and they keep coming in.
Me, I think they enjoy the game. Maybe they just can't figure out any other way to die.
They're the ultimate hunt.
ULTIMATE HUNT 6.
J.F.
I know all the arguments about hunting using minimum kit but sometimes the prey is so large you use everything and even that is only just enough. If you go after Leviathan on Liaququ with anything less than a two hundred metre raft, corner rooks twenty metres high with high test hawsers and Hunt Council rated winches you are going to come away a disappointed man if you come away at all.
And for those who don't know what it's like and think that there's no challenge with all that kit, then think again. Every time I've been out we've had to rebait. I know some people hire baitmen but that makes it all too easy. I do my own. When you're down there in the black water and you're trying to connect up that two metre worm and your hands are shaking and you feel him stirring in the deeps below you, feel the ocean surge as his fins like football fields fan the water, you know what it's like to be part of the ultimate hunt.
I've baited three times. I've hooked him once and he smashed two hundred tonne breaking strain filament like cotton candy. I'll get him next time.
Maybe.
ULTIMATE HUNT 7.
J.F.
Last night we were chewing the fat in Harry's Bar. The talk turned to the ultimate kill. Between us we had about a megayear's experience on a k of different planets. This was expert talk.
First we thought about size. Then we decided that size doesn't matter.
Then we thought about armour. Armour slows your quarry down.
Then we thought about speed. Speed is used to run away.
Then we thought about brains. It's brains that makes a good quarry. Just listen when hunters get together. Listen to the words they use when they talk about their favourite hunt item. They use words like sneaky and wily and clever. We couldn't decide even then.
Me, I had more experience than even that bunch of guys: I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. So if anyone should be able to work it out it's me. I sat there thinking. Along the back of Harry's bar there's a big mirror. I looked at our reflections, eight men with enough kills to fill a slaughterhouse and stuff it three times over with fur and scales and feathers.
The ultimate quarry looked out at me. I raised my glass and toasted my companions who went on talking of tigers and tarpon. But their eyes were on me.
They knew what I meant.
) beast...
