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millsy

bohuntr: There will beb mentions of gear in the thread as things happen. One of us is using a Black Widow recurve though. Will fill you in with mroe detail so as to not spoil the report.

millsy: We were hunting a privately owned station that was not on Aboriginal land. There were no licenses required due to this, just permission from the landowner. If you do get access to Aboriginal land, then yes you do need to have a permit and permission from the traditional owners and in many places in the Northern Territory now, you do have to use an outfitter.

There are still some good places out there and also some reasonably priced outfitters also. Logistically it is a massive place, so you either need local knowledge or a contact, or you are best of using an outfitter

I'm headed to the huge beasts this july/august coming - cannot wait!

Thanks for sharing it with us,

Take care!!

Pedro Ampuero

Very interested in this hunt, I spent quite some time this past weekend at the Sheep Show in Reno visiting with an outfitter who offers hog and buff hunts in the NT and I am seriously considering giving this a go.

What broadhead are you using there? The chiseled (tanto?) point is reminiscent of an old model of the famous bear razorhead I shot back in the '80's.

Thanks for taking the time to bring this to us, I'm looking forward to the rest of the story.

And that hog was a tank!

Cool adventure, thanks!!!

Jake, when we hunted it was very late for a buff hunt, right in the middle of the build up to the wet season. It was very hot and the humidity was a killer and there was a steady breeze each day that was quite consistent except at last light. I guess the breeze was being generated by all the storm activity a little further north as it moves in off the coast.

The broadhead in the picture with the tanto is called a Blackstump broadhead. They are made here in Australia and are very popular out here. They have been around for many years and are very tough.

The rest of us used different heads with varying degrees of success. They will pop up in the rest of the hunt.

A hunt in the north of Australia is certainly an adventure to savour. Just the sheer vastness of the place is enough to bring you back, let alone staring angry 1 tonne beasts and huge hogs. We were away from the coast somewhat, but if you do hunt near the coast, the fishing is world class also.

I am still somewhat unclear about what the tanto is. Is it a part of the broadhead?....Is any two blade broadhead called a tanto?

What is the fighting pad of a pig? Where is it located? I have shot my share of pigs, but that phrase is new to me.

Jake

The fighting pad on a pig is where the skin on the shoulder thickens right up, and is almost cartilage like, from years of fighting. This is to protect the flanks of a boar when they go head to head and slug it out with tyusks trying to rip open chest cavities along the rib cage. The pigs here in Australia have fighting pads as we refer to them as thye have a lot pure boar in them and also have quite big tusks in general.

Combined with mud, I have heard of fighting pads being able to absorb pretty solid caliber bullets. They have also stopped many an undergunned arrow and broken or blocked inferior broadheads.

Congrats on that fantastic hunt!

I would recommend a little bit higher poundage after seeing the penetration tests we did on rib, although more of that I would contribute to the broadhead and not the bow. When he switched heads on the testing, he did get good penetration through rib and deep into the chest cavity, so it remains to be seen on how it would go on a live one.

Buffalo really are a massive beast, with huge ribs and plenty of muscle to get through before getting into the boiler room. It is better to be over gunned rather than under. Good solid broadheads are paramount also.

They are quite a dangerous creature and will charge you. They have killed several people over the years and it is highly recommended that you carry a very heavy calibre rifle as a back up. We were to hunt another place with a friend who had a back up, but plans changed at the last minute and we didn't have access to a gun. It is not something I would do again to be honest after seeing them do what they do when annoyed.

Buffalo in Australia, as with every huntable species out here, are introduced animals and as such, our governments would like to see them wiped out. There have been government funded culls in the past and of l;ate the pet food industry gas embarked on taking out whole mobs of buff in their thousands, which is a damn shame. I know of one outfitter who be losing his hunting this year to them, so if you are keen to get after them, I would do it sooner rather than later as they will become rarer.

The pet food cullers have chiller trucks that they drag around to the kill sites in order to get it cooled down as soon as possible. Logistically for the common hunter, this is an impossible task to undertake.

The buffalo in the top end have also had epidemics of tuberculosis and the government have carried out many culls in the past trying eradicate it and them. The meat of an old bull is also tougher than leather and the only buffalo that I hear of being eaten for human consumption is very young animals.

A lot of the property owners want the buffalo shot out on their land and some do give access to earn a little extra coin in trophy fees and get the culling done by others. A carcass does not last long up there as the flies and the pigs clean them up in a short few days.

The pigs in the top end also eat heaps of carrion and are loaded with worms and parasites, so we didn't eat them either.

Over here, all of our huntable species are introduced, as we are not allowed to hunt our natives at all with the bow and only kangaroos can be culled by rifle under a tag system for property owners and professional shooters. The governments view is that all introduced species, often referred to as feral, are to be culled, so the attitude towards hunting out here is very different to that in the States, something that I wish would change.

Great job on the thread and the work involved, I for one have enjoyed it....

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Great to see someone making top quality heads at a reasonable price

That line about asking the donkey if he liked parfait was one of the funniest I've ever read on the Bowsite!!!