Amongst my son-in-law's siblings are the owners of a number of pastoral holdings, one of which has a few chital hanging around the basalt springs and swamps. In the past we have not had time when travelling to drop in and check out the hunting opportunities, but this time a clear 14 days was required after leaving SE Queensland's "covid hot-spots" before entering the Northern Territory, so we elected to do our self-isolation on a cattle station!

After cracking two hard-antler red stags in two days of hunting in the Brisbane Valley a week earlier, I was on a bit of a high with optimistic visions of sitting on the station-house verandah and picking out a nice 30-inch chital stag for the shot. Little did I realize that it would be a serious challenge just to get the cross-hairs onto a patch of spotted hide!

Apparently the region had experienced two weeks of soaking rain a month or so before our arrival, and the deer were scattered to the four winds. The few that remained in the closer paddocks were either invisible in the waist-high grass, or inaccessible in the brim-full swamps. The expected deer tracks and little piles of pellets were entirely absent.

The first day of hard-walking in the basalt almost destroyed my ankles, but I did see one chital hind running flat-out after getting my wind, and was privileged to watch a young stag for quite a while but without opportunity for a shot. He was standing in a clump of tee-tree about 150 metres upwind of me, partially obscured by timber, but appeared to sense he was being watched. I was in heavy cover but with nothing but open ground between us. After about half an hour of hyper-vigilance he had had enough and faded back into the swamp.

The next morning I was skirting a heavily-grassed blacksoil plain when I saw the tips of a hind's ears above the grass, then a second set. A pair of hinds was feeding slowly across my wind, and only about 40 metres distant. Just as I made up my mind to try for some venison, they cut my scent and immediately tore off across the plain, pronking occasionally to look behind for the source of the dreaded man-smell. What a pretty sight!

By mid-afternoon I was weary and footsore so decided to head back to the homestead and call it a day. Cutting through the edge of a tee-tree swamp I was suddenly confronted by the sight of a spotted deer rump! By great good fortune I had approached from behind a heavy blow-down, and the animal's head had not yet come into view so he hadn't yet seen me. I had already decided that with so few chital present, the next available was going to receive a bullet. I could clearly see the black stripe down the animal's spine so knew it was a stag, but had no idea whether or not antlers were even present.

After silently closing the bolt, I carefully shouldered the rifle and moved ever-so-slowly to my left, gradually exposing more of the deer until his shoulder became visible in the cross-hairs.
Boom! Dropped him on the spot.

I was less than 3 kilometres from the homestead in a straight line, so had plenty of time to get the meat cooled properly in the shade and the hindquarters completely boned out. Even so, packing-out the backstraps and hindquarters around the swamp and across the blacksoil plain was not trivial. In the end I was glad to avoid rolling an ankle on the numerous basalt rocks invisible in the long grass.

That venison tasted pretty damn good too!