A quick hunt

FEATURE Mark Young

I caught up with good hunting mate Zeb, and after a chat he gave me a hot tip on some sambar rutting activity and suggested I should give it a look as he wasn’t able to get away for a while. After a Wednesday evening call to Brett, another one of the backpacking clan, we organised to head up on Friday night for a quick back-pack hunt.

At Brett’s place we loaded his truck and made the three-hour trip to the road end, rolling our swags out for a sleep before getting up at 4.45am and walking into our camping spot. Having arrived just after day-break we dropped our camping gear and headed straight out to glass some open faces.

It wasn’t long before we spotted deer and then a very large-bodied stag appeared, but after having a good look we found that he had no antlers. We continued looking, finding a few hinds and calves, and then Brett spotted a big fella! Deciding he was worth a shot we made our way down a face to close the gap. We got as close as we could without spooking anything and set up ready for him to present for a shot.

Then out he came at 213m and side on! After Brett took the shot the stag took off, running 30m before he dropped out of sight. We waited the obligatory few minutes for the shot to take effect and then made our way down the face, across the very cold river, and up the other side - and there he was, right where he had dropped out of sight. The stag sported a very nice 28” x 32” wide set of antlers. We took some photos, did the knife work and continued on hunting.

We got honked at a few times and saw a few hinds for the rest of the day, but no further stags.

Sitting around the campfire dining on our gourmet dehydrated bush tucker meal, Brett asked about the next day’s hunting. As I didn’t fancy doing a big hunt then having to walk out, we decided to pack up early and hunt our way back to the vehicle by a different route.

After a good night’s sleep, we were up before daylight, had something to eat, packed our gear and were ready to go at first light. We made our way through several thick gullies, getting honked at by a couple of deer along the way. We then broke out into some more open country, which really looked good, so we slowed right down to give everything a proper searching.

Then I spotted a large-bodied animal side on at about 80m. A quick check through the scope confirmed that it was a shooter, but a big log was blocking the line of its chest. Re-adjusting my position and resting on a branch I was able to shoot over the log and take a spine shot which put him down on the spot. Making our way across to him we found a stag with very even 26 ½” x 28 ¼” wide antlers.

After getting some great photos, it was out with the knives again, and by 7.30am we were all packed up and heading for the truck. Unfortunately, we missed our turn-off and ended up in some steep bluff country, which made some really tough going. However, after 4.5 hours we made it back to the truck. We were pretty hungry after the big walk out, but a feed soon fixed that before heading for home after a very successful trip!

A big thanks to Zeb!