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Mick is a mate that hunts sambar with me (he took a ripper stag last year)I in turn hunt red deer with him in Nsw and now he has just come back from the top end with Ben another mate that was here with Mick chasing sambar with me a month or so ago. Anyway read about it on the link,It might surprise a few members just how "game rich" Australia can be...no guides no fee`s no trophy fee`s,just fun.

Im not sure if you need to be a member though to view the heap of game taken. A dozen or more BIG boars,donkeys,horses,scrub bulls and a couple of buff as well.

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'mickgibbo' date='Nov 2009'

I have cut this down to make it forum size and Swado will add his accounts as well in a seperate post. Im trying to get the full article published hence this cut down version.

After a quick phone call to a mate working at a station in the Northern Territory the all clear to come up and have a hunt and fish was confirmed, the good thing about this station was that it had never let hunters on so the game was hopefully going to be plentiful. Striking while the iron was hot a date was set flights and hire car was booked so the only thing left was to turn up on the day. For Ben and myself the date seemed so far away, so the time was spent fine tuning gear and making sure I had everything I needed for the trip. Squeezing both my rifles and gear into 20kg luggage restriction proved impossible so 5kg's was added on for the trip. My rifle of choice for the trip was a Ruger African Hawkee in 375 Ruger and Ben's was a Browning A-Bolt in 270WSM.

My gear for the trip

The day finally arrived and having pre approval to travel with firearms made getting there as simple as ever, Jet star were extremely professional and were hassle free at check in. We arrived to a very dark station and luckily guessed my mates room due to a cleaning rod being at the door, he was expecting up the next night.

The station was about 50km's by 50km's so we spent the first day just on main tracks and hunting off water bores as they were easy enough to navigate too.

Pig that got his ass slapped on video after a short stalk in

First boar for the trip

Shot the Highland Ammo pig

That night we headed out to the river for some fishing and to set up a camp as this would be the area that we would spend most the time camping from as it had water and fish and was slightly cooler in the night. We were taken out by one of Nathan's mates on the station Freddy who knew the pace like the back of his hand, he was a keen pig hunter with a serious collection of trophy hooks. He hunts with 1 dog and never lets the dog run on anything under 100kg, we pulled up to a carcass that had 5 pigs between 80-90kg at just 7m away, the dog didn't even flinch and we just moved on looking for a big boar, I could not believe the control and obedience of the dog, not to mention how hard it was looking at pictures at what it had taken this year.

That night we did a heap of fishing and Ben managed a nice barra for his troubles, the river was unbelievable and whilst crossing the falls with the headlamp on I was looking at crusing 1m barra just hunting in the moonlight. The crossing's were very slippery and the sets of eyes watching us was a little unsettling at times when you slipped in. It was hard to stop fishing but after little sleep the night before and a nice barra to cook up it was time to make a fire and have a fresh cook up. The barra was put in foil with some oil and salt and was absolutely sensational.

Freddy and his hook collection

The morning came way to quick we headed out from camp to a spot that hadn't been hunted at all, we were hoping that there would be some Buffalo hanging around as there was a spring that was running into a creek system. It was looking like the goods straight off the mark, but not for Buff as there wasn't a mark in sight, it was going to be a pig area more than anything by the looks of it.

We had only walked 50m when Ben spotted a bedded boar of about 100kg, the video and camera was set up and Ben soon had the pig on the deck, this was a great start and the rest of the area was just screaming pig with well shaded creek areas with lots of wallows and muddy pools.

We continued to walk along the creek to find monster hog after monster hog. I got to one spot that had a very solid boar sitting in the wall of the creek with what we thought was a sow next to it as all we could see was its head, we left the sows alone on this trip and were only targeting pigs 100kg and bigger. These pigs I don't believe have seen humans as they were far too easy to get right up and on top of, even when disturbed they would only break half the time. I shot the big boar out of the creek wall when the pig next to it just looked at it and put its head back down, we soon realised that this was another big boar and Ben took the other boar as well. The creek then exploded with another big boar taking off that I shot on the run down the creek. We had shot 360kg plus of boars in a 10m stretch of creek.

This pig was the smallest I shot but had the best hook I have seen, the other was snapped unfortunately

Typical river country scene

More to be added later.

Edited by NitroX (12/11/09 03:49 PM)