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Bloody Pigs and Scrub Bull
My recent hunting trip to the Northern Territory, this is the second trip I've done to the same cattle station a couple of hours inland from Katherine.
It takes about 2-3 days to get there once you leave Auckland, a shit load of paperwork before hand to take firearms into Australia but no real problems once your’e over there.
Hunting on a 250,000 acre cattle station and the cocky lease's another 250,000 acres next door off the "Natives" so bloody big country. I wanted to start the hunt getting onto a good size scrub bull, there’s plenty of them around but they are crafty buggers, they seem to know what’s happening. I wanted a nice coloured one so being a bit choosy it took 2.5 days for a good one to take my fancy.
In between looking there are plenty of other species to bowl over like Horse's, Donkey's and shitloads of Pigs, I shot a few horse's and pigs before nailing this scrub bull, and man did we cover some miles in the flat deck Landcruiser, I mean you are right out in the sticks and anything could happen, it adds to the adventure and it did but we won't go there.
Anyway on the 2nd day two of us left camp pretty early, before sunrise. I had my modified Tikka 300 win mag/Bell & Carlson stock with 2 x 10 shot AI mags loaded with hand loaded 180gr Accubonds and day pack with maybe another 100 rounds of ammo and Matt had his 450 Nitro Express double rifle just in case. Having 10 round mags really helped when getting onto a bunch of animals. We drove a fare way and didn't latch on to anything until about mid-morning when we came across a bunch of Horse's, I snotted one and the others took for the hills never to be seen again, loaded the old girl onto the back of the cruiser and back to camp for brunch before heading out to a part of the cattle station and other property Matt hadn’t been to before.
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We would have driven about 20km down one of the boundary fences and forded a small river that had flooded to a height of 23m during the wet season, I’m not exaggerating as you could see the driftwood stuck in the tops of the tree’s further up the river banks, shit it was hot, a nice place to have a swim but too dangerous as crocs are around.
Up the other side of the river bank and kept going for approx 10km before we had a pit stop, Matt was busy plotting our position on the GPS while I was having a leak and spotted victim number 2 for the day. A “Wild Dog” about 100 yards away so thought I wonder how it’s going to handle a 180 grainer, The rifle has a break on it and I had no time to put the earmuffs on and let rip, I didn’t take a photo of it as way to messy.
We were try to find an old track that ran at 45degs to the boundary fence, the cocky had told Matt about it but it was partially overgrown, after about half an hour over of driving around we found it and followed it at a slow speed, apparently it was to lead us to a big waterhole where heaps of animals had been spotted previously, like a year or so ago. Bloody nice hunting country but didn’t see a sausage, we must have travelled 10kms and thinking it was a waste of time when we spotted the waterhole about 300yds away with a heap of cattle hanging around it.
Looking thru the Bino’s we could see a few scrub bulls amongst the cattle and one was a beauty but the wind wasn’t in our favour so we had to stalk around them and come in from the other side of the waterhole. The cattle knew we were there and weren’t too worried but as we approached the waterhole from the other direction a bloody big pig wanders across in front of us to the waterhole and sits under a tree in the shade. Well when we follow the pig thru the bino’s we pissed ourselves laughing, there must have been 20 – 30 pigs under two trees about 150 yds away. We were after the Scrub Bull so stalked within approx 80 yds of the cattle but that crafty Scrub Bull must have known what was up so just casually walked a few paces to hide behind a couple of cows, this must have happened two or three time over the space of 20 minutes and was quite frustrating, just couldn’t get a shot away. Then about 8 pigs decided to trot over to the waterhole and have a drink probably 20 yds away, me still waiting for the Bull or cows to move when a heap of pigs decided to come even closer to the point where the game is about to be sprung so decided to bowl a few large boars so let rip with the 300, I nailed 4 large pigs two of which were decent boars with good tusks but needless to say the cattle pissed off real quick.
We decided to head back the way we came marking the track in a few places so we could make a return in a few days for another looksee. We had got back to the main boundary fence line when we came across a lone Scrub Bull, once again we did a circle and came in from behind him, and from 80 yds and totally unaware I fired one shot into the engine room, it was like a fly swat, he just stood there, you could see he wasn’t a happy camper so quickly gave him a second, third and fourth, he dropped like a sack of spuds on the spot
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We caped him and he’s on the way to the taxidermist for a shoulder mount plus removed one back steak off him, left the rest to rot.
The next few days was spent eliminating a heap more Horse’s, Pigs and Donkey’s but couldn’t match the 79 that I bowled last year but still fun. Will post up the boar pics when I locate them.
