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That night the other boys met us at the river for some beers and some fishing, it was a very balmy night with a bright full moon lighting the water up. There seemed to be good barramundi everywhere but nothing would bite. After hundreds of casts I tried another hole that was below the falls where Ben had spotted a handy barra having a rest. After a heap of casts right on his nose he finally took the lure giving a nice fight in a tight pond, I was wrapped to have landed my first barra and after a heap of photos he was filleted and cooked on the fire.

My first Barramundi, it was still sinking hot at 11pm at night

Once again lack of marks and how dry the area was suggested that they were no longer here as well so they day was spent hunting big boars and a few donkeys. We walked up on a mob of pigs that were in the shade of a fallen tree, these were the first bunch of sows that we had seen and the group was about 10 big. Ben spotted a good boar at the back of them and let him have it, there were pigs going everywhere and we managed to get some decent video of the event.

I got to a nice section of creek that divided 3 ways and was quite wet in the guts of it, I found a minute fresh wallow and started looking for the pig, I looked around a corner and there he was standing in the middle of the creek. I shoulder shot him on the spot and he managed to run to the other side of the creek. He was a very solid boar so I pulled him from the creek and started removing his jaws.

After a few minutes of cutting the jaws were off and I heard a noise and looked up to be staring 2m from the head of a 120kg plus boar that I had woken from his concealed wallow in the side of the bank, this pig wasn't happy and quickly exploded from the wallow. I jumped behind a forked tree where he just missed me, I lost my feet on some wet rocks and ended up in the creek with nothing but my knife. He stopped about 5 m from us looking back when I quickly just pointed the rifle at him without sighting and fired as there was no time to play around. The shot took a large chunk out of his back and he then took off down the creek. It was a close encounter that was a good learning experience in this country as these big boars can come from anywhere and don't like being blocked, it was a good wake up call and I was glad that my rifle was loaded in a safe place with the safety on in reach.

Hidden wallow where I nearly got smashed by the pig

His smller mate

The next day we headed to the back corner for one last go at at a Buffalo and to say the going was rough getting out there was an understatement it took what seemed like hours to go just 10kms, and it was a very rocky tight run that had only seen at best a handfull of cars on it over the years. On arriving to the corner we started a stalk and I quickly spotted some buffalo heading to water about 800m away.

We headed into the river where it quickly exploded with 4 Buffalo running down away from us, it was a great scene seeing these monsters just smashing everything in their path. They had crossed at this point and Ben quickly took a shot with the 270WSM hitting the lead bull in the head, stoping it but didnt drop it. I had made it to his point and shot a smaller one on the run with 2 quick shots from the 375 Ruger, it dropped the animal quickly. Bens was still standing there, so to stop the risk of it running I put the animal down with a shot to the chest. The 2 younger ones with them wouldnt move on but after a long wait they got the idea.

Young one looking on

Edited by NitroX (13/11/09 06:04 PM)

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