Thread: One of those Days

He got caught Poaching on his own Trail Cam :-)

Well this starts as the roar kicked in. It was a funny roar, they roared OK but as we can only weekend hunt we may have missed some of the better days. We set a few extra cameras in different areas and got some really good shots several nice 11's the big drop tine 16 pointer roaring in one of the wallows and numerous other stags. The 13 th of April I was hunting with Wayne, Beemans oldest son, we had hunted for several hours and heard a few stags and eventually got in close to one. I held off roaring until about 70 yards out then gave a soft roar , he answered then after a while started coming in. I seen an antler then the head and top of the neck, Wayne couldn't see him where he was so I took the shot, shit I missed clean. First stuff up.
The next weekend we had two stags come into our roars , the first cut our wind and that was that. The second came in but stopped on the other side of a skid site but wouldn't step into the open and ghosted away.
After that the roar started to tapper off so we had nothing on the ground.
On opening weekend I did a hunt in my local forest, very pleased to see a fair bit of sign about. On Sunday the wife and I went for a look see and found a nice spot on a clear cut plenty of sign so I sneaked out there in the late afternoon. 15 mins before dark out pops a big hind, 475 yards, 3 shots later still standing then walks off, Fuck stuff up number 2. Teach me not to get a good solid rest.
Roll around this weekend. Beeman and Mrs Beeman checked there camera lines lot of Sambar activity, preaching, ripping up rut pads etc and several different stags about. ( PD had been caught on camera (Wallaby surveillance camera) on the 14th April so is still about although we haven't seen him on our lines yet)

On my line I only had one camera to check so I then continued around a ridge system for a hunt. About half way round when on a high ridge I heard a branch break Ah I thought that's got to be a pig or deer, then a punga began to shack and out stepped a damn fine looking redskin, long black antlers and plenty of points. Murphy's law prevailed and he stopped in a bunch of crap about 15 meters below me.
I put the scope on a patch of grey hair but couldn't ID which part it was for sure so held fire, then the hunters worst enemy hit, wind, it reached the stag and he exploded out of the shit and I managed a shotgun style snap shot to no avail, nearly cried listening to him crashing off into the distance. Stuff Up number 3.
As the afternoon hunt neared I decided to change rifles and took my 6.5x55. We did a short cruise before Beeman dropped me off on my chosen spot ( Gibo you know the spot ) I walked up the old track then up to the clear cut which is fast being overtaken with gorse. I looked up the edge of the pines and there was a sambar hind watching me only it's head visible, she took off with another in tow. Bugger I thought, I figured I should wait a while so spent the next half hour watching the small grassy patches to no avail, Time to move so up to the corner then into the open pines to start my stalk back round to the road.
All was going well, I got to a nice open spot and paused looking to my left into the open pines, nothing, then I glanced to my right, sheit there was a monster Sambar Stag striding it up a trail heading towards the clear cut, I raised the rifle and let him have it at about 40 meters in the shoulder , he jumped and took off. I could hear him crashing through rubbish then it went quite …..that was a good sign I thought.
No blood along the way but I found big deep skid marks ,then an old punga stump smashed up then beyond that an antler, a big one, sticking out of the blackberry. I got to him and shit he was a monster the best I have ever shot.


My Sambar 213 DS what a beauty.
I took some photos then removed his head and gutted him, that was a mission but got it done and rolled him on his back and propped him up to cool, no way was I moving him now with darkness about half an hour away. My shot had hit him in the shoulder a little low, the bullet a 143 gr ELD X destroyed his heart and lungs and lodged on the off side in front of the guts , perfectly mushroomed .



I took the head and beat the feet back to the road to meet Beeman who was rapped to see I had finely shot a record book stag. Beeman had twisted his knee during the morning hunt and was now starting to feel the pain so he was out for the meat recovery tomorrow. Lucky he found a willing young fella Dan to lend a hand in the morning.
Sunday morning had Dan an I were on the way to the stag to break him down and get him back to the road. We got busy and took the legs off and back steaks along with the neck meat. Dan took a front quarter, Back strap and one side of the neck in the first load, I had the other back strap and tried to carry the hindquarters but only managed a short distance before I dropped them and took the pelvis out and took one leg in my pack.



Dan headed off while I finished getting the back legs done and meet him coming back for the next load. After I got back and a short break I headed up and meet Dan not far along the ridge so I dragged the hind leg back to the road.
It sure was good to have him back a the truck. We ended up with 106 kg of meat, no rib cage, neck, back bone hooves etc so figured he would have been about 200 kg + on the hoof.

After the shot he had run about 70 meters before going down. The next series of pictures are his heart and lungs, the bullet entry into the chest cavity and the recovered bullet.

What a weekend missing a huge red skin then taking a monster Sambar stag, it sure is nice to be relaxing with the feet up right now.

Bloody hell that's awesome. I have always wanted to shoot a Sambar.

Maybe the caption should be "Horse gets tired, Man carries Horse!"

Originally Posted by Mooseman

Attachment 111654

News flash.........

“Deer shits man”!


Top story @Mooseman
They look like a good thick set of antlers

Well done @Mooseman that's a cracker. Reckon it will take awhile to beat that one.

Originally Posted by ghosts

Well done @Mooseman that's a cracker. Reckon it will take awhile to beat that one.

It sure will be, they don't come easy as a rule, this one was in the right place at the right time, bit like most as 5 minutes either side of when I got him he wouldn't have been there. We do have a better stag in this area we have been following for about 3 years on the trail cameras , we think he could be around the 240 DS, hard to tell until the tape is on them,but he is big.