Thread: NT Thermal Pig Hunting

Pig hunting from a stand in the Northern Territory
On my recent trip to Australia’s Northern Territory I spent part of a night up a tree stand overlooking a bait station and it was funny as hell.

Well we had got up early in the morning with only about 5 hours sleep overnight and headed out for a full days hunting so by the time evening came around I felt bloody knackered. The hot weather and then sucking on quite a few tinnies gets to you real quick until some bright spark suggests that I should sit in a tree stand for most of the night overlooking a bait station that we had dropped off a couple of horses a few days before.
Basically after a carcass has been in the sun for a few days she’s real ripe and if you are down wind you can smell them from a fair distance, pigs love them.

It must have been 10pm when we parked the vehicle about 400m from the bait station and used the gps to guide us to it in the dark, shit the noise I was making trying to walk along a small game trail and thru the long grass in the dark wasn’t good, I’m sure anything that had ears would have bolted well before we got there.
Anyway as the two of us approached the bait at about 50yds there was a hell of a commotion, a heap of pigs came running at us from all directions, I reached into my pocket and pulled out my FLIR Thermal monocular which l had luckily switched on a few minutes before hand and scanned the scrub around us, half a dozen pigs were high tailing at a great rate of knots so the general feeling was that I had fucked it up so the next 50 yards to the tree stand wasn’t done in stealth mode.

The tree stand was a one person jobby and once we got there the other guy departed to go to another bait station a few k’s down the road and he would return in a few hours time to pick us up. Well I climbed up the ladder with my rifle and day pack making a shit load of noise. A small wooden platform jutted out from the tree with a plastic chair on top, no hand rails or anything to hold onto. Once I got settled in and had my rifle across my lap I could hear some crunching noises, straight away I thought PIG’S. I pulled out my Thermal monocular and homed in on the bait which was about 20yds in front of me, I couldn’t believe it, here was a bloody big pig munching away on one of the horse carcasses. After all the noise we had made banging and clanging up the metal ladder and dragging the chair around on the wooden platform this pig was oblivious to what was about to happen.

I sat there for maybe 10 minutes watching him have dinner when another pig wandered up so I scanned the surrounding area to my right, I kid you not there must have been 30 odd pigs in a large group about 50 yards away. I must have spent an hour just watching these pigs thru the Thermals trying to understand how they operate. I had shot a few trophy boars in the few days up till this night so didn’t have to plug any more. My eyes were sore looking thru the monocular. The best setting was on “RED” Hot but I noticed that the Termite mounds would be glowing red hot as well.

Very interesting to observe there hierarchy and the big pig gets his way alright. After about an hour they all buggered off, I could have decimated them but with the amount of shootable game around a still a few days left to hunt it wasn’t a problem. After nodding off up the tree stand I slumped forward and nearly fell out of the stand, farrrrking dangerous as I would have no doubt broken my neck, could imagine laying there with some big fat boar ripping me to shreds for a free feed.

Sounds like a barrel load of fun over there

No video footage then?

Originally Posted by geezejonesy

No video footage then?

No proof as I don't have video out on the hand held and no pics either, you'll have to come next year so I can prove it.

thermal's are cool -

by red - think you mean insta alert feature?

I can take some images of deer (on a farm) with a unit on Friday night

I think the "game" management thing is maybe the wrong attitude over there. Just blast away at them, the farmers need them decimated.

Ok nearly forgot about this - these are rabbits approx 160m away - different lenses and levels of digital zoom

The images are taken via a camera - actual view is a better

But you get the idea anyway