07/01/2011 Bird hunt.

This day started really well I’d slept well without interruption and was looking forward to bacon & eggs with coffee with real milk and orange juice…… And then the roosters started. Time to wake up. I mean get up.

The day was pretty much uneventful as can happen here. Everyone goes off to work and Nuch’s sister normally falls asleep looking after her daughters little boy.

It had been decided that the evening meal would consist of mookata. Mookata for those who don’t know, involves putting an aluminum dome with slots in it on top of a concrete lined bucket. (the bucket is filled with glowing charcoal) The dome has a little gutter around it. So you put slices of meat and other bits on the dome and noodles and soup stock in the gutter part. Then with the mandatory acoutraments like chile and the like you’re ready to spend the next hour eating. Depending on the soup stock you use the soup can be sensational.

Before we settled down for dinner however and with the sun about to set I was met with yet again an indication of local Isan ingenuity. Brought about by the sun going down and the birds finding there local sleeping spot my brother in law Mang showed up with an air rifle. Now when I say air rifle you’re probably thinking a well engineered rifle not unlike you’ve used or seen at a circus duck shoot or the like. Nothing of the sort.

This particular contraption with the only thing giving you an idea that it was a gun being the long barrel, was somewhat unique. An air chamber linked to a breach provided the means for firing a 4mm diameter lead ball. How do you charge the gun? Well that’s easy, with a bicycle pump of course. Yep, hanging off the bottom of the barrel and mounted in front of the stock was an every day garden variety bicycle pump. Sensational.

Now what do you hunt with an air rifle? Well, birds of course and I must stress that everything is fair game around here and the hunting is not just for sport. Well almost, Mang would like nothing more than to stock the local canal with crocs I think. In fact he’s like the Thai version of the Ausy character Mick Dundee.

Now I know why I only hear chickens in the morning 🙂

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