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Thought it was about time I posted a story and photos of our family Chital hunt near Charters Towers in July last year.

From where we live it’s a good days drive to Cairns with the old Landcruiser all loaded up and towing my quad. We stayed with my mate for a couple of nights in Cairns then set out for the Towers, arriving mid afternoon. The original plan was to camp for 10 days or so down on the Clarke R so that’s where we headed after catching up with the property owner. Set up camp and sure enough at about 4am the next morning the heavens opened up out of nowhere.

By 11 am things were looking pretty bleak so I thought I had better see if the Cruiser would make it up the river bank onto flat ground – it did, so next I tried the empty trailer. Got it half way up then lost traction and started sliding backwards. Luckily I stopped sliding before I jackknifed the trailer! Wife and boys looking a bit worried at all this palaver – I stayed in the car with foot on the brake and got Jen to run the winch cable out and get it around the base of a tree. Thank god for the winch – after much mucking about and with smoke pissing out of the winch at one stage, we finally got the lot up onto flat ground.

A quick sat phone conversation with the property owner confirmed my suspicions – rain not likely to stop for a few days – get out of there now while you still can – lots of black soil to get thru on the way back to the house! So for the next couple of hours we dismantled the camp and traipsed everything back up the hill, loaded the car, put a few light bits and pieces into the trailer then set off. I sent the boys (13 and 10) ahead on the quad and we followed in the Cruiser. Got about 1 km and had to unhook the trailer as I couldn’t get it up a long slippery slope. We carried on minus the trailer and made it back to the house, slipping and sliding the whole way. The boys did really well, sensing the predicament we could be in if we weren’t careful.

Back at the house Jimmy set us up in the ringers quarters where we waited 4/5 days for the rain to stop and the ground to dry out enough so we could get around. I went back on the tractor to rescue the trailer after a few days while it was still raining. We spent the wet days reading and playing games and the boys did some school work etc.

It didn’t take long for the tracks to dry out enough to negotiate on the quad once the sun came out. We spent the next 7 or 8 days having a great time, out each day looking for a good stag for me and hunting a doe each for the boys and Jennie.

Chital numbers here are really good and driving around you would think they wouldn’t be much of a challenge to hunt. Stop the vehicle and get out for a stalk tho and it’s a totally different ball game! All you see is there little white bums disappearing into the distance. I had hunted chital a couple of times before but this was my first time unguided. I learned heaps in the week and managed to down 2 nice representative stags – the 30 inchers managed to stay out of my way tho! I was able to get the boys and Jen up on a doe each and we field dressed each one, taking the carcass back to the meat shed for processing and skinning. We ended up with a 60 litre Engel full of venison and 3 skins which I later tanned and are now rugs on the floor.

This is Tom with his doe taken with his little cut down Sako .223 using 53 gn Barnes TSX’s. He and I got the wind right then crawled thru the knee high grass up to a small tree which had fallen over. One shot thru the shoulder and she was down.

Here is Jesse with his doe taken in thicker country using his Mum’s Kimber 7mm08.

And here is Jen with hers taken at about 70m with the 7mm08. All three were the culmination of quite a few failed stalks – I wanted to get them all up as close as possible for a close target and a sure 1 shot kill. They’ve all shot ferals before but this was their first deer hunt and I wanted to avoid the emotional stuff inevitable with wounded doe’s running all around the countryside. It worked out perfectly.

Here is my first stag. I went out early one morning on my own. I had seen this stag a couple of day’s prior and planned my route to bring me in down wind of him. In the end the wind was perfect and there was heaps of cover allowing me to get to 50m or so from him. I used Jens 7mm08. After the shot I got on the 2 way and Jen brought the car over and we caped him out in the field, finishing off back at the house.

My second stag gave me the best stalk I’ve ever done. About 1.5 hours on hands and knees, covering a distance of about 400m of open ground and having to avoid detection by countless pairs of eyes. In the end I took the shot at 170m (ranged), as it was getting too dark to get any closer. I used my Brno M21 8x57 and 180 gr Ballistic Tips. Did the caping in the quads headlights and with the aid of a torch.

Where we live there are definitely no bunnies and the boys were dead keen to have a crack at some while we were there so we took them out on the quad spotlighting a couple of nights. They really enjoyed themselves. Of course then I had to dress the smelly little buggers at 10:30 pm in the freezing cold, much to the delight of the resident cats!!

So, all in all we had a great time. Jennie reckons it turned into the best holiday she’s ever had and the boys still talk about it.

My quad is a 2002 Yamaha Kodiak 400 and I am still absolutely amazed at what it can do. It drags the 4 of us and all our gear up hills, thru creeks and rocky terrain in the heat and dust of Nth Qld and elsewhere and doesn’t falter. I’ve dragged dead horses across paddocks and used it last year to pull the fully loaded Cruiser to jump-start it! A great piece of machinery!

Edited by GG375 (08/02/09 08:03 AM)

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