Dan and Cam Invade Australia!

[cacciatore]

Guys,I am pretty excited about Australia,thanks for sharing!

[Wolfkiss]

Love these Ozzy threads, congrats and thanks for posting.

[graybark uk]

great thread guys ,keep it comming .
would love to make it to oz one day

[The Vanilla Gorilla]

Originally posted by amar911:
Great stories, guys! Cam, we will get together when the shipment arrives.   Super boar!      

Allan

Thanks Allan!  Just give me a call or a PM and I'll come up and pick it up.  Maybe bring Pat Kelly with me and we'll hit up an archery range and make a day of it.

Cam

[The Vanilla Gorilla]

We ate a lotta redclaw.  Locals call em yabbies. They're like a genetically mutated crawdad.  I was perfectly content to peel and suck the tails, but Andy made an excellent etouffee out of em one night.  Andys a great cook, and we share a lot of the same tastes in culinary artistry (yall like that?)  Between the two of us, we destroyed a lotta Tabasco sauce!  I still owe you a bottle, Andy.

 


Dan, testing his luck with the Barramundi, Saratoga, and other leviathans.

 

 

[The Vanilla Gorilla]

Towards the end of the trip, I had started finally feeling better and went out with Dan, Andy, and Corey, the other Australian bowhunter. While sneaking up a gully, we got caught out in the open by a bedded boar.

The way he looked at us, he musta thought we were lost. A coupla whiteboys wandering around in the outback in the heat of the day...how dangerous could we be, really?

Well, this boar found out when I sent an arrow into him at about 25 yards. I think I took him thru the liver, and maybe got a piece of the lung. He got sick immediately and was slow moving. He wandered over to a fallen tree on the edge of a pond and buried up in the roots, and I was able to get in close for a follow up.

Well, that was the plan, anyway.  I've never flat out missed anything so close like that before. That pig was in the roots standing up, MAYBE 5 yards away. And I missed. No excuses, I just sucked at that particular moment in history. The hog rolled out and trotted a short distance, coming to stop in an open area, where we closed back in on him and I hit him with another arrow.  He whirled around as if to charge, when a chartreuse arrow from my left came from nowhere and caught the hog high in the lungs, changing his mind.  He turned around, and I was able to sneak another arrow into his lower chest cavity, taking out the heart.  My 2nd hog down.

Dan, Andy, and I on the hog that me and Dan doubled up on.

 

[razorsharptokill]

I can finally see the pics. Wow! What a trip!

[Rik]

This thread is a bad, bad influence.

I hope some responsible person takes it down before it costs us the rest of us lots of hard-earned money.

----- Oh who am I kidding?  Money? It's like water flowing over a rock. It just keeps on going and going.

Ahhh. . . but memories are everything. They stay forever.

This thread just pushed me over the edge. Outback wild country-----get ready, here I come again!

. . . the rest of you? Avert your gaze from this thread, lest ye be in for the wildest ride of your life. Ye be warned. . . the Outback has not been tamed. There is some seriously wild country out there. Oh, and those Yabbies taste really, really good!

Nothing like gourmet bush tucker after a day of great hunting. Mmmmm-mmmmm!

[The Vanilla Gorilla]

Lotta truth in your words, Rik!  I may be over there with ya someday cause I'd love to go back!

[gregg dudley]

Great stuff, guys!

[JDunlap]

Vanilla, I have one of Rutter and Biles bows. Sandy Biles made it for me this past spring. a 62" recurve..about 56# at my draw. Shoots really fast and smooth. Waiting to shoot something with it. Took a nice doe with one of his longbows last year.

[JDunlap]

By the way...great job down under -- looks like a lot of fun!

[DHR]

Awesome batch o' pics Cam.  I'm getting hungry just thinking about those red claw!

I did manage to catch one fish on the trip, which amply justified bringing a flyrod all that way.  I'd read up online about baramundi and saratoga fishing and convinced myself i needed some serious gear so I brought an 8 wt rod set up with a 20# leader and steel bite tippet.  

Here's the leviathon that I subdued with said setup.

 

It's a saratoga.  Caught him on a bass popper in the lily pads.  A 5wt would probably have been better, but I was stoked just to catch a fish.

[cacciatore]

great story and pics!      

[DHR]

Thanks Felix!

Time for another hog killing story

This one was pretty much total luck, but it ended up with a hog on the ground so I'll take it.  We came across this boar while trying to put a sneak on a bedded sow.  Andy and I watched him move to the edge of a small swamp and bed down.  I moved in on him but just before I would have gotten the clear shot at an unsuspecting pig he heard or smelled something and jumped to his feet.  I made a rushed shot and watched my arrow fly low.  dissapointed in the shot i nonetheless tried to stay with the pig as he departed.  Then I noticed he wasn't moving quite right, apparently I'd hit him but didn't know where.  A second shot missed, but I got the next arrow into, but only through the guts.  This is when things got interesting.  Earlier in the morning I had killed a sow, so I was down to three broadhead arrows and a blunt in my quiver.  The three broadheads were now used up and I had a fairly angry boar facing me...so I shot him in the head with the blunt.  It had pretty much no effect, except maybe to avert a charge as the boar started moving out at a pretty good clip.  I did the only thing I could do which was follow and try to keep him in sight.  Meanwhile Andy and Corey were trying to dig my arrows out of the stumps they were stuck in and make them functional again.  Miraculously they accomplished this and were able to relay the fresh arrows up to me, which I proceeded to shoot into the pig, finally killing him two arrows later.  And the first shot.... it had passed through both front legs at the knee and stayed there, which explained why he'd slowed up in the first place.

 

[DHR]

Here's a couple more sows that hit the dirt....

 


 

[Over&Under]

I am so stinkin jealous of you guys!  What a great hunt some fine trophys!

Thanks for letting us enjoy it with you.

[Guru]

Awesome adventure fellas!                

Daniel, You throw a nice tight loop brother    

[wooddamon1]

Livin' large! Killer stuff!

[jcar315]

Great thread guys. Thanks for sharing.

Congrats to you both!