SINN FEIN activists Barry McElduff and Martin Conway will go anywhere for a vote. They run up lanes, leap over fences and jump into a field to reach a farmer who is in the middle of lambing.
The farmer emerges, hands covered in blood. The two republicans are unperturbed. "Will you give us your support in the election?"
"I'll give you my vote but I'll not give you my hand," the farmer says and the three men laugh.
Barry McElduff leaves the field grinning from ear to ear. The new constituency of West Tyrone is a huge, sprawling place which is daunting to all but the most committed of canvassers.
It's 62 per cent Catholic but a split vote should mean that the single unionist candidate, Mr William Thompson of the UUP, wins. The combined unionist vote in last year's forum election was 15,000. The SDLP secured 11,600 votes, just 100 more than Sinn Fein.
However, only two thirds of nationalists voted then, compared to 80 per cent of unionists. The SDLP insists if these people can be persuaded to vote, it can win a Sinn Fein makes the same point in its own favour.
Sinn Fein is giving West Tyrone its all. The lights don't go out the party's headquarters in Carrickmore until well after 1 a.m. "We have deadly stamina," boasts', Barry McElduff.
Sinn Fein's candidate, Mr Pat Doherty, munches through chicken curry as he explains that "things are going really well". As his party's vice president and talks negotiator, Mr Doherty (51) has a high profile.
Born in Scotland, he has lived ink Donegal for the last 29 years and has been a republican activist for 26 of them. He is a calm, pensive man with a dry sense of humour.
Earlier in the day, he was detained for an hour by British soldiers: "They were very small and very young and they wanted to know my name which was very strange because the car was covered in my election posters. I wouldn't give them my age. I try to talk to the British army as little as possible."
He was, however, more loquacious in Dromore when the Sinn Fein team ran into a woman leaving a house. She was eager to explain she was just visiting but Mr Doherty canvassed her anyway and the pair shook hands much to the amusement of his workers. They later explained she was one of West Tyrone's leading Orangewomen.
The thrust of the republican campaign is that a vote for Sinn Fein is a vote for peace. Mr Doherty says IRA violence has been mentioned on the doorsteps but that voters are more concerned at the SDLP's "rejection" of a nationalist election pact.
The SDLP candidate, Mr Joe Byrne, says he is winning support from Sinn Fein. "Their own supporters are despondent and confused about what the IRA is doing," he says.
A friendly, down to earth man, he says he is receiving a great response. "I was invited into 16 houses in Gortin for tea and buns, which is just as well because I haven't had a dinner in two days." Mr Byrne (43) is his party's vice chairman and a local councillor. He stresses that, unlike Mr Doherty, he is from West Tyrone: "I was born and reared in Castlederg. I have taught in Omagh College for 18 years. People feel that I'm closer to them. My face might not be on national television but it's been in the local papers for years."
Mr Byrne isn't openly critical of Mr Doherty but says he alone has the professional and local government experience required for successful lobbying at Westminster, Brussels and Washington.
"The west of the Bann has been neglected for years and I will fight tooth and nail for funds," he pledges. However, if the forum poll is a reliable guide, the man most likely to be MP for West Tyrone on May 2nd is a Beragh businessman, Mr William Thompson, of the UUP. Mr Thompson (57) is a lay Methodist preacher and archetypal middle of the road unionist. His hero is Abraham Lincoln. If elected, he would work for "Catholic and Protestant alike". He would not, however, relish the limelight.
"I never thought the opportunity would arise for me to be an MP. It came out of the blue. I'm a pretty ordinary chap. I say what I mean and mean what I say."
Even his opponents haven't a bad word to say about him. "He's a unionist," says a republican, "but he's no bogy man."