Sitting at home on Sunday arvo, feeling restless, so I decided to dart out to my local sambar spot and check the trailcam, and put in some fresh batteries. By the time I got myself organised and out there it was about 4pm.
No time to waste, brisk walk over the saddle and down the other side. Fight my way through the wattles and the unmistakable sound of a sambar crashing out of it’s bed. I could see the tops of the wattle 15m away sway as the deer took off. Oh well, bound to happen when you’re marching hard. Get to about 500m from the trailcam so I slow down to stalking pace, and start using the bino’s as I sneak along. Not long before I see a hind feeding across a big gully. Slowly sit down and take off the pack, as another hind and spikey appear. The three of them are only 80m away feeding happily. I take out the camera and tripod and snap off a few pics of them feeding.
The dominant hind didn’t appreciate the other feeding too close and lashed out at her with her hooves, managed to get it on video. The other hind ran off in the other direction, as the dominant one chased her for a bit. This had them feeding away from me, so I packed up the camera and tripod, and tried to sneak a bit closer with the longbow.
They had fed down into the thick cover in the gully, and I peeked over the edge to see one hind about 45m away. I could only see her bum and one side of her face through a wattle as she quartered towards me. I took my eyes off her to look at where I placed my feet and took a step six inches to my right. I had kept my bino’s up to my face, and shifted my gaze through them only to see one eye and a big ear looking back at me through the foliage. Damn! She was on to me -Nothing like a reality check. Any delusions of me being a stealthy stalker were quickly put to rest as I remained motionless for the next two minutes. She lost interest and looked the other way, but I still wasn’t game to move – expecting her to suddenly look back to try and catch me out. It didn’t happen though and although not seeing me as a threat (she would only be able to see a quarter of my head through a trees’ foliage halfway between us) her senses told her something was amiss. She was looking in all directions, then without warning, took off up the other side of the gully. The other two followed her out of sight, and one minute later I saw one of them run up my side of the gully about 80m ahead.
Righto game on, three sambar in the thick stuff 80m away.
Very slowly stalk a couple of steps and search with the binos. Repeat. Didn’t want to spook them, as the buggers are clever enough without educating them any further. Probably five minutes were taken to cover 40m. I thought I would have seen them or heard them by now, so assumed that they had kept going when they came out of the gully.
Decided to head straight to the cam, and took about three steps, and saw two bums standing broadside at about 40m. Stopped suddenly (probably too quickly) and received a honk for my efforts, as they took off. Oh well- that’s definitely it now. Never helps to be in a hurry.
Cross the gully to where the Cam is and can’t believe the amount of big trees that are blown over from the recent storms. Many of the trees are 30m plus, and silt is all through the gullies indicating that the amount of rain would have been phenomenal.
Cam was still there, so swapped cards and batteries, and headed back out to the car. Wasted about half an hour on a “short cut” that led me to some of the thickest rubbish growing on the hill, and a few moments of becoming “Geographically Challenged”. With that sorted, I headed back down to the ute, and put up another at 15m in the bracken. Man – I never see this many when I’m looking for them. Always the way.
Once at the ute drove around to where my mate said he had seen a wallow. Walked around for a bit looking, but couldn’t find it, so I put the second trailcam up over a good looking preaching tree. Pretty dark my then so home time.
Managed to find a few pics of this handsome fellow having a bath at the wallow. I dare say I will be putting in a fair bit of time and effort trying to find him in the next year or two. This is what 600lbs of trophy sambar stag looks like.
Hope you like it.
Memo
Topic: Aussie Sambar scouting trip (Read 553 times)
