A Kiwi bloke named Graham and I were the final two hunters for last season with Matt Graham being my guide for the week and Graham being guided by Aussie larrikin, character and all around good guy Steve "I Like Guns" Lee. I couldn't have asked for better company for a week in the bush.
THE camp is on a working cattle property a couple of hours out of Katherine in Australia's Northern Territory and the accommodation is comfortable...tents with a large communal meals and kitchen area. Hot showers and flush toilet round out the amenities. My tent is on the right and Graham was in the one to the left in the photo below.
Day 1 We were up before first light and off to stalk in on a bait in the pre-dawn gloom. As we got into range of the bait a very large boar had already winded us and was moving off heading toward the nearby creek offering no chance of a shot. We then decided to check out a couple of brumbies shot the week before in a different paddock. We stalked in from about 600m away and found a good boar was just moving off from the bait. Matt urged me to shoot him, but the extended range, nerves and not being able to get a clear shot between the trees and termite mounds caused me to hesitate. Matt suggested we get closer and I readily agreed. It turned out to be a good idea. When we got closer we saw that the boar was moving toward a mob of pigs further into the re-growth. We waited until he had joined them and then we moved in to about 80m away and studied them through the binos, finding not one but two good boars among the mob. I shot the two good boars and another two sows while the others just stood around watching.
I also got my first look at a buffalo bull when I heard sticks breaking above us and this fella came in to within about 50m while we were taking photos of my pigs.
The middle of the day was spent looking at baits to see what had been freshly fed on to establish a plan for the afternoon. We decided to take a couple of camp chairs and wait on a bait until after dark. It was well after dark before we heard a splash in the water beyond the bait. Half an hour later still nothing had appeared at the bait when I heard crunching footsteps in the dry grass behind us. I whispered to Matt, asking if he could hear that, and then a huge boar walked up beside us, casual as anything and stopped to look at us from a range of about 4 to 5m. After a minute or two he decided we weren't worth worrying about and continued on to the bait. Matt gave me the thumbs up so I stood and got ready to shoot. Matt flicked on his torch and I fired from a distance of about 12m or so. He was in long grass with only the top third of his body visible and I made the mistake of hitting him too high. He was, however, hit hard and stumbled a few metres to our left, then turned and came sort of towards us. I hit him a second time and he was down for good. He was a monster of a boar, well over 100kg but unfortunately bugger all in the tusk department. Unfortunately I didn't get a good photo of him due to the darkness.
Day 2 Up again before day light and off to check a couple of baits. The stalk in was ruined by a feral horse who kept running up ahead of us and spooking everything in sight. After finding nothing on the baits we decided we would go shoot the horse. Unfortunately by then he had run up into the trees behind a mob of buffalo and when the buff spooked, they took the horse with them. We spent the day exploring some new country, finding a very promising young buffalo bull in the process.
We also went for a walk along a creek high up on one of the jump-ups but didn't find anything other than an interesting little cave.
Back to the car and continuing on our journey, we came across a couple of really good scrub bulls. While looking at one of them a mob of six donkeys came into our sights. I anchored all six to the spot with single shots, but two of them needed a finisher. We dragged them together to create a new bait site with plans of visiting them on the last afternoon of my hunt. I didn't take too many pics of the donkeys, but here is one anyway...
And here is a nice young scrubber that caught my eye. He'll be a ripper in a few years.
We continued on and a few kilometres up the road we ran into another big mob of scrub cattle with a couple of good bulls among them. We also had a good laugh at one little rotund bull with stumpy legs bringing up the rear of the herd. Like the little fat kid who gets picked on in school by his bigger class mates... After they had moved off we continued another 100m or so and hit a fenceline, turned around to head back and just opposite where we stopped to look at the bulls was a mob of four donkeys. I rolled two of them and Matt said to leave the others We dragged the two donkeys together and made another bait site to visit on the last afternoon.
That afternoon Matt dropped me out to a tree stand overlooking a bait site to see what turned up for a feed. Unfortunately nothing showed and the day finished without another pig.
Day 3 Up before dawn for a quick breakast then out to stalk into another bait site or two. No pigs on either of them, but the pigs had been had been there through the night. We then checked out a swamp that Matt hadn't been to before. Leaving the vehicle and heading off on foot, we had only been there for about five minutes when Matt spotted a wild dog trotting along. He whistled to get the dog to stop while I leaned against a tree and shot her from about 80m.
While looking at the dog, a young buffalo bull decided he didn't like the fact that we were obviously in his territory and started moving towards us. He would come in a few steps, then run around to our right, then come in again, then run around to our right. Matt had said a couple of times "Geez this fella's a bit cheeky". It wasn't until he started undoing the velcro on the holster of his .44 Magnum hand cannon that I twigged to the fact that "Geez this fella's a bit cheeky" was actually code for "one tonne of buffalo is about to smear us into the dirt". Swinging the rifle off my shoulder and disengaging the safety I caught myself wondering if a 150gn bullet from a .270Win up the nostril would do the job on a uff. Fortunately I didn't have to find out. Matt grabbed the dog and we beat a hasty retreat into the patch of thick scrub next to us & made a big arc back to the car. Tense stuff indeed. Pictured below is the trouble maker...
I went to a different tree stand that afternoon and once again nothing was happening with the pigs. They were proving very elusive. A big male dog came into the bait at about 8.50pm and had been there for about 10 minutes when I heard the vehicle coming to get me in the distance, so I flicked on the light and another wild dog was on the deck.
Day 4 Once again the pigs had beaten us in the morning. We stalked in on a couple of bait sites to find nothing in attendance, then walked for miles along a couple of creeks to no avail. On the way back to the vehicle we ran into three feral horses. As we were stalking up to them, they inexplicably ran off across the other side of one of the creeks. We stalked down to the waters edge and getting a rest off a convenient tree, dropped one with one shot from around 160m. Matt explained that the pigs like horse meat above all else so he would've liked to have dragged the horse back to the nearby bait site, but we couldn't find a way to get the vehicle across the creek, so it stayed where it was.
After our midnight raid the night before, it was time to hit the sack for a snooze. That afternoon I sat at another tree stand from about 5pm until around 9.30pm. Just before dark a big male dog came in to the edge of the bait and stood about 10m to my right sniffing the breeze before heading to the nearest carcass ready for a chew. His female companion, however, kept off the bait a distance of around 30m and circled around the bait site, stopping at the track Matt and I had walked in on for a sniff. The she was on to the tree behind me where Matt had stashed a camp chair cause the tree stand was a bit narrow for me. Both dogs moved off without feeding and returned three times in total, each time visiting the chair on the ground and leaving again without feeding.
About 9.20pm three pigs came in. I couldn't tell what they were in the dark, but could see two very large black shapes and could hear the third off to my right behind a low tree. Matt had told me that quite often the boars will hang back a little, then join in after they're satisfied everything is okay so I had convinced myself that the third pig I couldn't see was a boar. After 10 minutes or so I thought I saw the third pig in the clear so I flicked the light on in that direction. Turned out to be just the shadow of a termite mound, so swung the light back toward the bait. A large sow dropped to the shot and then I could hear the unseen pig off to my right take off through the grass back over my right shoulder. I couldn't swing the rifle around that far to the right due to the way I was seated in the tree stand and also the tree at my back, so flipped the rifle over & shot at the fleeing pig left handed. It was something I've never done before so had no idea how it was going to go. Dropped the pig on the first shot but it was squealing up a storm so hit it again. By that time the other pig was long gone, so got two of the three. They turned out to be two big old sows.
So the big plan had been put in place for the last afternoon of the hunt. We were off to visit the two lots of donkeys I had shot on day two. When we got to the mob of six donkeys I had shot there were pigs already on the bait. As we tried to stalk up to them, three different lots of cattle spooked, running in every direction and spooking the pigs as they went. We left the bait undisturbed and headed to the second lot of two donkeys I had shot. We parked about 500m away and stalked in slowly.
As we neared the bait Matt spotted three large pigs about 300m away down on the creek flat. We continued on to the bait site and got comfortable on our camp chairs. While watching the three through the binos, one of them decided to take off for no apparent reason. One of the pigs still there was a very good boar so we thought we should go and get him before he decided to take off too. We hadn't gone 30m when he decided to head towards us to the bait. I leant against a tree and when he put his head down I shot above his head into his spine and he dropped. He was on a game trail so we decided to leave him there until later, rather than scent up the track the game were using.
Back to our seats we went and out with the binos again. After a while I spotted a huge boar coming in from the scrub along the creek. I pointed him out to Matt and we watched him walk all the way up to his fallen mate. The big boar became jittery. We were discussing going for a stalk and getting him, when Matt noticed another big boar coming down the track we had driven in on. When the two boars met up near their fallen mate, they turned and headed towards the bait. We had already started stalking toward them and had to freeze where we were, about 8m from the bait. The boars were about 60-70m apart when the first one got to the bait. I had previously asked Matt which one I should shoot as I wasn't convinced I could get them both. He said I needed to shoot them both. No pressure of course...
I was trying to leave it as long as I could to allow the other boar to get as close as possible before I attempted the double. That decision was taken out of my hands when the first boar stood between the two donkeys looking at us from a distance of around 7m. With it being almost fully dark, I decided it was time. I raised the rifle and dropped the first boar with a head shot. I then swung onto the second boar and hit him hard with the second shot. saw him hit the deck. He was up again in a flash and I hit him again. I turned my attention back to the first boar to make sure he was down and out as we were very close quarters, when Matt said the other one was up again. I took a few steps forward to the nearest tree, took a rest and put the boar down for keeps. He was by far the biggest of the three. The first two were well over 100kg and the third one had at least 20kg or more on them. Even though the first boar I shot on the first morning had the biggest tusks, these three were definitely the highlight of my week with Hunt Australia.
(Sorry for the quality photo but my camera packed it in on Day 3 so Matt and I only had our phones. You can see the big boy closest to me in the photo.)
On the way back to camp we stopped by my mob of six donkeys again, stalked in from 500m away and to within 60m or so. Matt flicked the torch on and we both thought nothing was there. Then there was a grunt and a small mob of pigs stood up from their slumber around the bait. I dropped two big sows from the mob and we called it a night.
I want to thank both Matt and Steve for their efforts. While Matt did the guiding for me, not to mention cooking, cleaning and tusk extraction for the camp, Steve and his Kiwi hunter Graham kept the baits stocked with fresh donkeys and horses. Unfortunately Steve "I Like Guns" Lee didn't have his guitar with him, but he kept us entertained with stories, jokes and card tricks. He made me promise not to Google them to see how they were done, because I would "lose respect for him as a magician". He's a funny man, and the whole trip was a blast.
Story first published on Australian Hunting Net
Reprinted with permission.
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