Awareness

I'm trained to pay attention to detail and have used the skill to great effect over my professional and personal life also. It's about taking note of one's surroundings and what's going on around oneself, understanding it and remembering it in case that information may come in handy at some future point. It's called situational awareness.

As someone who is in wilderness and remote areas a lot it is a skill that comes in very useful; one can't simply wander about aimlessly in terrain where there's no trail markers, signs or designated tracks; that's how people get lost and that doesn't always turn out well.

Speaking of lost

I was out hunting a couple nights ago and hiked about for around four hours, tracked and stalked targets and took several shots. It was night time and the only light I had was my spotlight. Making out landmarks at night is difficult and despite being terrain I'm familiar with a couple of times I thought I was somewhere, but was not there at all. It's the nature of moving about at night, things look different and distances can seem skewed.

Anyway, I stuffed a bullet binder holding some rounds into my jacket pocket within easy reach for when I needed to reload my magazine, shouldered my pack, took my rifle and off I went.

A bullet binder is a tri-fold wallet-type thing that has loops into which ammunition can be slid. Mine have two rows of ten so it holds twenty rounds and one simply folds it closed and jams it somewhere convenient. It's a soft thing, not a hard case, and that makes it easy to stuff into pockets and pouches for easy reach. Here's what it looks like and pictured are a couple shots of one of my actual bullet binders.

Tracking...hunting...stalking, shooting, hunting, stalking, tracking...That's what I did for those few hours in the dark and when I finally got back to my 4x4...no bullet binder.

Right away I knew it had worked its way out of the pocket I'd jammed it in and was out there in the bush somewhere. I said, fucking fuckety fuckballs, out loud.

Of course, looking for it that night would be useless so decided I'd go back on Saturday and retrace my steps and that's where situational awareness comes into play.

The thing is, losing the bullet binder itself isn't such a big deal, yes it's $135 AUD to replace and that's not great, however the worse part is that it had five rounds left in it which is bad. One doesn't want to make a habit of leaving live ammunition around the place. Fortunately the area I was in is private property so some random hiker won't come across them but still, it was not good to have lost them and I felt pretty bad about it. I was confident I'd find it though, despite the rough terrain, long grass and vast area.

I knew I'd be able to retrace my movements, the tracking and stalking and those positions I shot from, and that gave a strong probability that I'd locate the bullet binder and redeem my fuckassery for having lost it in the first place.

Mission bullet binder rescue

It kicked off at lunch time on Saturday, a cold day with intermittent sunshine and sprinklings of rain. I parked my 4x4 and set off to retrace my movements of a couple days earlier and scanned the ground around me as I went. I couldn't be exactly sure of walking in my own footsteps of course, but casing about from side to side meant I'd be able to see four to five metres either side and I figured that would have to do.

Two hours later, no bullet binder.

Three hours later, no bullet binder. I said this again: Fucking fuckety fuckballs.

As I retraced my steps remembered from a few days earlier I located where I'd made every shot from using terrain references and recreating how I took the shot, angles and directions, within around ten metres of accuracy, then did a grid-pattern search ranging out to twenty metres around it. I then moved off to the target (animal) I'd shot scoping the ground as I went and did the same around the dead animal. I'd then move off and do it all over again, scanning the ground the whole time.

As I neared the five hour mark and had few steps left to retrace I began to despair of ever finding it. I didn't think the thing would have stuck around in my pocket for the whole time only to fall out in the last few moments. I was a bit sad and decided to say, fucking fuckety fuckballs, once more but they were hollow words, no solace was found.

The bullet binder is about the size of a large mobile phone when folded up and only slightly thicker. It's also camouflaged so seeing it wasn't going to be easy but, damn it, I was so confident.

I left the area in defeat with a few more, fucking fuckety fuckballs, being uttered and thought about the implications of live rounds being left out there.

There was only five rounds in the bullet binder, not the full complement of twenty which is something positive, but I really don't like the thought of live ammunition laying around. I also don't like my carelessness which is not at all like me. I guess mistakes happen but I really should have taken greater steps to secure the bullet binder from the outset and have had the situational awareness to know they weren't safe in that pocket and to know the moment in which the bullet binder fell out. So dumb, so, so dumb g-dog.

I'm very competent when it comes to this sort of thing, outdoorsy stuff, firearms, hunting, situational awareness, securing my equipment and that sort of thing and yet I made a mistake. Yeah, it happens even despite the training and preparation. I feel like an idiot, not for being unable to find the bullet binder but for having not secured it properly in the first place; complacency I guess, stupidity for sure as well. But done is done; a lesson learned the hard way...and I'll go back for another look in the coming week.

What about you? Have you ever lost something due to your own negligence, laziness or failure to prepare correctly? It happens, clearly, and I guess we've all done such things at some stage. Feel free to tell me in the comments or just make a general comment if you like. Also, if you want to show solidarity feel free to comment with a, fucking fuckety fuckballs!