When the Stars Align

[memo]

It all started with a chance meeting. I had taken the fiancée and kids out bush to grab my trailcams from a few spots to see what deer were poking around. The family had a great time as I pointed out to the kids the different birdlife, and the stonefly and caddisfly nymphs under rocks in the creek. The boys found the different kinds of droppings I pointed out, to be hilarious. A few good rubs, usual wallow activity and some sign indicating a few deer were feeding out of the bush into the more open creekline and onto pasture.

 

Unfortunately some lowlife decided that my homebrew trailcam was theirs, so that put a dampener on my mood. On the way back across the open paddock, a car drove past and pulled up. I introduced myself to the occupants, Mark and Emma. We got talking and it turned out that although Mark and I had never met, we had a few mutual friends. He was staying on the property that I was planning to bring a mate to, so he could hopefully get a look at the elusive Sambar deer.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with Sambar,I found this quote from an American hunter;

  Take the cunning traits of the whitetail deer, the elusiveness of columbian blacktails and the caginess of high country mulies, and combine them with the superior instincts of the elk. Now roll them into one species. What do you get? The ultimate forest dwelling deer; the sambar of Australia

Now Mark being a keen Sambar man, living in the heart of good country had his finger on the pulse of the local deer population. He kindly offered his local knowledge and show myself and Ben a couple of spots that held more Sambar than the property we intended to hunt. Numbers exchanged and a rough plan set out for the following week.

The next week was busy with work, getting jobs done at home, sharpening broadheads, organising and packing gear. The big day finally came around, so I said my goodbyes to the family and drove off to pick up my mate Ben from the train station. Anticipation was high, so the trip to the property went quickly as Ben filled me in with his success stories from a fortnight prior up in the Northern Territory on big boars and Banteng bulls.

We pulled up a Mark and Emmas’ place on dark, and after a quick chat we were off in his car for a look at where we would hunt in the morning. The plan was to wait on a low saddle that the deer had been using to cross the hills that separated their feeding areas on the river flats to their beds. We saw two spikers in the headlights so Ben and I were keen as mustard to get amongst them in the morning.

We rolled out our swags outside Mark and Emma’s place, had some dinner and stood around the fire chatting until it was time to get some sleep.

[Stump73]

   

In for the rest!

This should get good!

Bisch

[Whip]

I love a good story from Down Under and this one is starting out great!

[Cyclic-Rivers]

Bummer about your camera.  

This story is shaping up good        

[Broken Quiver]

[KentuckyTJ]

Nice!

[Sockrsblur]

 

Nice lead into the hunt! Let me pull up a chair  

[ozy clint]

waiting.....      

[memo]

Up at 4am and we had parked the car and made our way up the gully in the dark to where the saddle lay. Ben set up prime position amongst the branches of a fallen gum tree about 30m from the saddle. I contoured around to the next gully to see if I could come across some deer feeding their way back. I was struggling to get into the groove a bit so I sat on the side of a spur and glassed and waited for a while, and generally tried to get myself into hunting mode.
After a while, I headed off again and slowly worked through the gully. It was very wide and open in a few places, but not a huge amount of fresh sign. It was soon 9am and time to meet Ben back at the car. He saw some Gang Gang cockatoos, had wallabies and wombats wander past, but didn’t have any deer come through the saddle. At one stage he had heard a heavy animal crash through the bush, but not come past.
We went back to camp for a cooked breakfast and a nap before the afternoon hunt. Feeling recharged and refreshed, I sharpened my broadheads and Ben made sure his compound bow was still sighted in after the trip down, we headed off to catch up with Mark.
Here’s a couple of pics from my trailcam showing what a 700lbs Sambar stag looks like
 

 

 

[Izzy]

Super cool deer.

[memo]

The spot we were headed to was somewhere I used to hunt when I lived in the area. Mark said it held a few resident hinds and yearlings year round, and that the patches of prickly coprosma (Like a thornbush, but a favourite browse) throughout the snowgrass tussock and stringybarks  eucalypts would provide some close quarter action. We got sorted and headed off, we walked in for a hundred meters or so, and then it started to look good. We had slowed down and decided to split up and work towards a distant saddle in the large shallow basin we were in. I took the left and Ben the right. We agreed to cooee if we shot something and use the radio to talk afterwards.

I had only gone a couple of hundred meters when I noticed a ginger bum of a Sambar about 50 meters away. I could tell it was side on and it was on the edge of a patch of bush. I wondered if I should drop my pack to get my camera out when an alarm honk made the decision for me. It was a hind and as she trotted off through the intermittent scrub, I saw a yearling follow her

Happy to at least have seen one, I kept moving in my planned direction. Only five minutes later I heard the sound of an animal moving through the scrub. The constant crashing rather than the “thump thump” of a kangaroo hopping, told me it was a deer. I ran about thirty meters to try to intercept while the deer was making noise, when a hind broke out of the bush into more open country. I thought it was the same deer as earlier, and as more crashing followed I expected to see a yearling come out of the bush.

My jaw dropped as a Sambar stag trotted out and stopped broadside about 35m away. He looked about 24inches long with nice long inner tops and good weight to the beams. He had stopped with a wattle tree about six inched thick right in line with his crease at the back of his shoulder. I had already got an arrow on the string and willed him to take one step to clear the tree. As he stood there he didn’t even look around, he had his eyes fixed on the hind that had stopped two meters in front of him. This had all happened in less than two seconds and I realised that he wouldn’t take a step, but would just follow the hind (which must have been in season for him to act like this) when she moved off. I would have liked to be closer, but I knew I had to shoot now or miss out. I drew back, anchored and aimed a bit forward to make sure I cleared the tree.
Next thing I knew there was a Sambar stag trotting off with my yellow fletching waving around his shoulder. He trotted off 50 meters over a rise and disappeared.

[memo]

I couldn’t believed that had just happened. The arrow looked for all money it was in the triangle, albeit not too much penetration. I marked the position of the shot with my GPS and noted the time. I planned to give him half an hour, as I was worried about penetration, and didn’t want to push him.
 
 

I started to flip out a bit as I had been trying to get a Sambar, any Sambar with a longbow for ten years. I had never been able to get closer than 50 meters before being busted, and now one stops broadside in front of me.

[memo]

I had forgotten all about Ben, so I cooeed to let him know what had happened. His reply came from nearby, which surprised me. About thirty seconds later he came out of where the stag had come.
“Did you hit one?” he asked in a loud whisper, “Yep” nodded frantically. I must have made a sight, I reckon I would have had eyes like poached eggs as the adrenaline kicked in.
“Was it the stag?”
“Yep”
“You little ripper!” or words to that effect.
Turns out that Ben had bumped the stag and hind out of their beds and had pushed them over my way. He asked what happened so I told him about the wattle and that I aimed forward. He asked about penetration, and I said that it wasn’t the best but it looked like there should be enough in to stop him. Ben was saying “this is it, longbow Sambar, you did it”. There would only be around 100 Sambar bowshot in Australia, with most of those coming in the past decade. Sambar stags with Traditional gear you could count on one hand.
Ben suggested that we go after him now, before it got too dark. I started looking for tracks or blood, but couldn’t find either. I went over to where I last saw him as I thought that he would have started bleeding after trotting 50m. I started walking in increasing circles to find something. I saw the arrow, and yelled out to Ben.
Oh crap.
My heart sank.
My arrow was on the ground with only an inch of blood behind the broadhead.
Shoulder blade.

 

[dhermon85]

[memo]

I was speechless, I thought the shot was good, it wasn’t high, but when I aimed forward to miss the tree, I must have hit the shoulder blade down low where it meets the ball joint.
I was glad in a way that it was a clean getaway for him, as they can get worse injuries when fighting, but for the sake of one inch further back, I would have nailed a Sambar stag.

I told Ben to take a few pictures of the arrow, as that might be as close as I’ll ever come to getting a stag.

   

I dusted myself off best as I could, and we decided to go ahead as planned and meet up in the saddle. We went our separate ways and pushed on.

About half an hour later I reached the saddle without any action, I looked for Ben but he must have still been stalking so I decided to head back in the direction of the car. As I was moving through the area, I realized that I was replaying the whole event again in my head and not paying any attention to what I was doing. So I sat down and had a drink and a quick muesli bar to take 5 and switch on again...

[memo]

I decided that it was time to head back to the car as it was nearing dark. I wouldn’t have gone fifty meters and I saw the back and shoulders of a Sambar stag about 30 meters away in a patch of coprosma bushes, thrashing them to bits. I could see his neck and shoulder muscles flexing as he smashed branches, and could see that his back and shoulders stood higher than the previous stag, he was a big bodied mature stag.
He stopped moving, let out a honk and took off. I didn’t have a chance for a shot or even see any antler. I must have been holding my breath as I watched him because I then exhaled and relaxed my shoulders. I thought to myself that he couldn’t have heard me as he thrashed his antlers or smelt me as the breeze was moving across us. I didn’t even see his antlers so it was unlikely that he saw me, and even his honk was half hearted, and as big bodied stag like that could have parted my hair at that range.

I decided to stay put to see if he would come back out of curiosity to see what had disturbed him. After about two or three minutes, I realized that I was standing in the open, so I moved over a couple of meters to stand in front of a Stringybark tree to break up my outline.
I stood there with an arrow nocked, looking for any movement in the big patch of coprosma.

After about a minute of standing next to the tree, I spotted the huge frame and antlers of the stag walking in a slow, stiff legged gait around the coprosma patch. He had his nose down and as he passed behind a single bush, I turned 90 degrees to my right and put my bow arm up...

[achigan]

Some on has been taking lessons from Mr. Lamb...  

[memo]

As he passed the bush he stopped in the middle of a two meter wide gap. I could see his antlers high off his head and his brow tines prominent, so I knew this was a good stag.
I remember thinking “This can’t be happening” as I drew back to full draw and released. The arrow hit him behind the shoulder and for the second time in an hour, I saw my yellow fletching hovering around the shoulder of a Sambar stag as he trotted off.
“I can’t handle this sh!t” I said aloud as my legs turned to jelly.

I cooed out to Ben, and I heard a distant reply. I did it a few more times, as I was in such a state, I had forgotten about the radio. I turned it on and asked if he was on station.
“Yeah mate, it’s OK. I know where I am, I’m nearly back at the car” he thought I was making sure he wasn’t lost.
“I just shot another stag”
“The same one?”
“No, a bigger one”
“GET F#%*&, Keep cooeeing and I’ll come straight over”

I let out a cooee and then marked the site of the shot with my GPS, some surveyors tape and made an “X” with some sticks. I was replaying the shot over in my head and was worried that there might not have been much penetration. There was defiantly more than the first stag, but after what happened I was second guessing now. The shot looked like it hit six inches behind the crease, as I remember thinking not to hit the shoulder blade again. I was confident that it was not too far back to miss lungs.

Ben had got back on the radio and reminded me to keep cooeeing. It took him about 5 minutes to race over, and I don’t know who was breathing harder when he arrived, as the adrenaline kicked in.

I talked him through what happened, and we started to look for sign as it was almost dark now. Headtorches on and very quickly Ben found the first drop of blood. It was about the size of a 5 cent piece and had bubbles in it. He moved fast spotting the drops, as I followed behind, head spinning and not being any use at all.

We had gone about fifty meters and we couldn’t find the next drop, they had been sparse, with only one drop every two or three meters. Eventually we decided to abandon the search as it was dark now, and I didn’t want to push the stag.

We got back to camp and Mark asked how we went, Ben just gestured to me and Mark said “Well?” After I told them what happened, Mark said that he’d take the day off work and give us a hand looking for the stag. He also said that he’d bring his Labradors to help out. They were only young (around 12 months), but that’s what he got them for, so hopefully they could help find the stag.

As the night wore on, we talked around the fire with a few drinks until it was nearly midnight. Eventually I got into the swag for the night, but I woke up a couple of hours later and started thinking about the afternoons events. There was no chance of getting back to sleep, as I replayed it over and over, I was thinking that it would be gutting to hit and lose two stags in one day.

I saw a shooting star, so I made a wish. Then I said a prayer to the big fella upstairs, surely it couldn’t hurt.  While I was at it I reckon I asked Buddha, Allah and even the Tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny got a run. After about three hours I finally got back to sleep.

[ozy clint]

 please find it.