Hunting Australia, with Kayuga Broadheads Part 1

This is part 1 of my hunting trip to the Northern Territory of Australia. Join me and Matt Moore of Kayuga Adventures as we hunt water buffalo in the remote Arnhem Land region. Matt traveled 3,000 kilometers in his Land Cruiser, and my own journey from the 6Ranch took me 6 days to reach the hunting location. Together, we trekked some hot miles, hunting giant water buffalo bulls with bows, learning about the traditions of the local Aboriginal people, and confronting the diverse and challenging landscapes and wildlife of Australia.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Remote Australian Hunting Adventure
• 17:25 Australian Hunting Expedition Insights
• 24:49 Buffalo Hunting on the Australian Savanna
• 33:24 Buffalo Hunting and Conservation Discussions
• 42:08 Study on Buffalo Vision and Hunting
• 47:43 Buffalo Hunting Lessons Learned
• 1:03:16 Buffalo Hunting Shot Placement Analysis

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

And I thought, righty-o, if we just stand here, he's going to come down into the water and at some point there's going to be an opportunity. So he slowly come down and he's on to it. He didn't really like the look of the car and he kept looking back and he would take a couple of steps and he would stop and he would look around and he was real alert up and you'd look around and he was real like real alert.

Speaker 2: 0:29

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Speaker 2: 1:05

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Speaker 1: 2:18

So I had three days of travel, 3,000 k's. So once I left the hunting camp on the station, I travelled for 1,000 k's that day, 10 hours, camped the night on the side of the road, and I'd done that for another two consecutive days and uh, darwin oh sorry, catherine was the first shop that I'd seen in 3 000 kilometers that had supplies yeah, so about at that point, you're what?

Speaker 2: 2:58

28, 29 hours of driving into it before you see a town?

Speaker 1: 3:01

yeah, like a coming the remote way. Yeah, you know like it's a yeah before you see a town. Yeah, like a coming the remote way. Yeah, you know like it's a yeah before you see a town, before you can go to a yeah, a shopping center. And what were you traveling in? Uh, just got me cruiser, land cruiser yeah, single cab land cruiser.

Speaker 2: 3:19

What year is it? No, it's 2013, okay, and you've got this thing outfitted for this type of job.

Speaker 1: 3:27

Yes.

Speaker 2: 3:27

Yeah, so talk to me about your truck a little bit.

Speaker 1: 3:31

So yeah, it's just, it's a Land Cruiser Got a canopy on the back, Just finished decking the canopy out.

Speaker 2: 3:40

Canopy sitting on a flatbed.

Speaker 1: 3:42

Yeah, a flatbed, like flatbed ute, got a rooftop tent onto the top, two spare tires, um, and yeah, big battery system, solar system, uh, fridge, so we can sort of stay out here if we get. If we're getting solar, we can stay out here as long as we need.

Speaker 2: 4:05

And you came into Darwin and picked me up. Let's see my travel. I left the Six Ranch, drove three hours to the airport, flew from Pasco Washington to Seattle, washington, seattle to San Francisco, san Francisco to Singapore, which was 16 hours. Singapore to Darwin and then the Darwin airport to the hotel. I gave myself a couple days to get used to the jet lag, because we're currently 18 hours ahead of my time zone at home, so I'm a day into the future, right now you know you can tell the future, and yeah, so got to cruise around darwin.

Speaker 2: 4:53

Really beautiful city, interesting history, especially interested in the in the war history there. So a lot of folks don't realize this but darwin was bombed by the japanese not long after Pearl Harbor, just a couple months later. And there's more casualties in Darwin than there were at Pearl and you know there's definitely a joint effort there. But we had American fighter pilots in kitty hawks, uh, fighting against the japanese zeros there at darwin and um, very interesting war history in the town and the town itself is is grown a lot. You used to live nearby a decade ago but it's changed oh, it's changed massive, yeah.

Speaker 1: 5:41

Yeah, like where there used to just be a servo fish and tackle shop and a couple of shops, now there's a cinema, hungry jacks, fast food outlets, a tavern, kmart, woolworths. Yeah, it's um all developed out.

Speaker 2: 5:54

Yeah, it's um growing really fast and a really gorgeous waterfront, the, the water. There is beautiful, yep uh, lots of crocodiles oh yeah, yeah, lots of crocodiles. Everybody talks about crocodiles. You know I I don't run into anybody up here that doesn't like. Warn me. I I must have a look of like. This guy's a bit slow, so we're gonna tell him a bunch of times no, we just make sure that you're well aware that there's crocs.

Speaker 1: 6:20

Yeah, there can be crocs around any creek bend yeah. Sitting on any bank underneath your feet if you're fishing yeah, and you won't even know they're there, right.

Speaker 2: 6:32

So you come to Darwin and pick me up. We spent the night at your buddy's house. Very hospitable of him. Thank you, Jock. The guy's basically a professional archer Let me shoot my bow on his range and we took off, bought some supplies in town and we were thinking this was going to be a six or seven hour drive, but I think it ended up being closer to 10 or 11 hours to get up here.

Speaker 1: 6:59

Yeah, it was. I've never been this way through the territory, the central Arnhem road, and I knew like it was sort of 300km, 350km. We had to go and I sort of calculated it. But yeah, just winds and corrugations bends. It's a pretty rough road. In some sections, some of it's alright, and corrugations bend. There's pretty rough road in some sections, some of it's all right and um, anyway, we will plan to get here yesterday afternoon, but we camped on the side of the road and got here this morning. Yeah, we made it happen.

Speaker 2: 7:34

So, uh, yeah, it was a little bit longer, but we're here now and we're we're hunting in a country called arnhem Land and uh talk to me a little bit about the Aborigines here and these, uh traditional owners that are allowing us to hunt.

Speaker 1: 7:53

Yeah, so it's, uh, arnhem, a lot of different clans or TOs, you know. So there's so many TOs in this area and they've all got their certain section of land and you have to get permission off them to be able to hunt, yeah, to even be here to fish at camp on their land.

Speaker 2: 8:24

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 8:24

So yeah, getting access can be um hard sometimes. You know they um, they live remote and they have, they can have jobs, but it's hard for them to have jobs as well. You know they've got to travel a long way if they want to live on their land to a job as well, yeah, I mean, you're talking about an 11 hour one-way commute to get to work at least.

Speaker 1: 8:52

Yeah, they can get jobs on the roads and ranges and stuff around in the national parks and stuff like that. But like, if they want to go to town to get milk, bread, eggs, um, there's no mail service out here so they've got to drive 10, 11 hours one way and you know you asked, you'd ask them what, what they needed from town, and it was basically a bag of groceries and a little bit of tobacco yeah, that's it.

Speaker 1: 9:23

They live pretty simple. Yeah, you know, they'll go fishing and catch their fish and they'll shoot a buffalo or a cow to eat and, um, yeah, they'll cook it up their traditional ways and eat it and they'll go.

Speaker 2: 9:38

Yeah, they just they live off the land, you know we saw a ton of buffalo on the way in here, uh, and then today we got to see quite a few.

Speaker 2: 9:47

We got three stalks in uh didn't work out on on any of those three, but after we'd we'd met up with the traditional owners here and uh kind of exchanged goods and and talked to them about what the plan was, and uh, you know what, what they, what they wanted us to do and where they wanted us to go, we came out here and set up camp. As soon as we were set up we took off on foot and within just a couple hundred yards we spotted what turned out to be the biggest bull that we saw all day Great big bull water buffalo. Great big bull water buffalo. Now, having been warned over and over again about crocodiles and the places that crocodiles can hang out, it was obvious that the best way to work the wind to get on this bull was to walk through a swamp. So within minutes of leaving the truck, we're taking boots off and I'm almost waist deep.

Speaker 1: 10:49

You're up to your nuts in the mud.

Speaker 2: 10:52

Mud and water and I was thinking like I don't know how smart this is. But you know it worked out and I've been training. I knew we were going to be hunting barefoot from time to time up here. I started walking barefoot and shooting my bow barefoot in April when it was still snowing, and I did it all summer long, as much as I could, and I was glad to be able to use that right off the bat and we had a great stock on that bull and got got up to 40 yards away from him. But I'm trying to get a closer shot than that. You know this is a big, tough animal and I want to be very precise in that shot and that means that I want to get a little closer. But he was on to us pretty early on and I think it was because the the birds that were on him that spooked off, got him really alert.

Speaker 1: 11:46

Yeah, there was a lot of bird life around and they yeah, any animal around a swamp sort of triggers to bird noise. Yeah, but like where we crossed, that swamp was pretty safe in my mind.

Speaker 2: 12:01

You know.

Speaker 1: 12:02

So I looked around. We had ankle deep water, but we had knee deep mud yeah um, it was clear there wasn't much grass around for anything to explode out, um, and stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 12:13

We weren't in waist deep water, or yeah or anything like that it was like only yeah, four inches or six inches of water, but then, yeah, up to your nuts in in mud. So but yeah, we got around there and yeah, the birds ticked him off or yeah, something he he didn't like. Anyway, we, we played cat and mouse with him for, I reckon, an hour and a half yeah and um, yeah, he was just too good for us.

Speaker 1: 12:38

Yeah, but, like you said, like you want to get close and get a precise shot, which is is so good because you get one arrow there and double lung him and we'll watch him go 50, 60, 70 yards and and fall over. So and that's what we want you know?

Speaker 2: 12:54

yeah, absolutely. This is an incredible animal that I've thought about hunting for most of my life and I would be. I would be ashamed to take a shot that I wasn't sure of. And that's not to say that I might not make a mistake on a future hunt, because it's sure possible. However, I'm going to put the odds in my favor to the greatest extent that I can, because when I kill something, I want it to die quickly. I think that's the most ethical thing you can do.

Speaker 1: 13:26

Yeah, no, that's great and that's what it's all about. If you bow hunt, you want to get close. If you want to shoot critters at 50, 60, 70, 80 yards with a bow and arrow, well, you should sort of go pick a rifle up, because so much can happen in them long shots, one step they're gone. Like you hit them too far back, um, you can misjudge and and hit them all too low or too high or you know like if you're close, the the closer you are, the surer it's gonna be.

Speaker 2: 14:03

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Speaker 2: 15:27

In part of my efforts to be as lethal and as ethical as I can with bow hunting equipment. About seven years ago I started shooting a new type of broadhead. That was new to me and I'd known that there was some really good archery tackle coming out of Australia because I knew that you guys bow hunted all year long and there's nothing like repetition to get better at something. I think we all understand that the more you can do something, the better at it that you're going to get, and because you're bow hunting for so many different species all year long, you're getting a lot of reps in and then a lot of these species are tough animals that are covered in mud and muddy hair is about the worst thing that you can do, to a sharp edge, you know oh, it's yeah, 100 like yeah, it doesn't take much to take a edge off something if you've got mud hair.

Speaker 1: 16:25

So if you hit something that's crusted in mud, you've got mud to penetrate. Then you've got hair to penetrate, then you've got to. If you're connecting with bone, you've got to get through there. Then you're into the vitals, yeah, and you need it to be sharp at that point, that's right.

Speaker 2: 16:40

You don't need it to be dull, yeah so, anyways, these, these broadheads that I'd come across, um, I got turned on to him by a guy named craig hales, who's an australian hunter, and I met him at the ata show. Um, they were kind of shaped like a, like a, like a fighter jet, and they're single bevel. They were made out of one piece of metal, so they're super, super tough, no moving parts, and I was like man, these things are pretty great. And started shooting them and everything that I shot. I was getting pass-throughs, I was breaking bones, I was getting to reuse these broadheads over and over again. I was like man, these things are pretty sweet.

Speaker 2: 17:25

So, fast forward to this year, I saw Blood Origins was was having a raffle for some hunts in Australia. I had bought a ticket to come down here to hunt buffalo in July of 2020 and I bought it the previous winter. Of course, covid had the country shut down for you know a couple, couple of years and, uh, I didn't get to go. So when I saw that that this was, you know, one of the things on that raffle, I was like heck, yeah. So I bought some tickets and I ended up winning.

Speaker 2: 18:03

So Robbie calls me and he's like hey, you want to go to Australia. And I was like, yeah, absolutely. And I I'd kind of forgotten, uh, at that point, that I'd even bought these tickets, because it was like a month later or something. And you know, I thought it was just like a random conversation that I was having with Robbie from Blood Origins and he's like, well, you won, you won a pig hunt. I was like, sweet, I'm going pig hunting in Australia, let's go. And then he's like, yeah, reach out to this guy, salt of the earth, dude, you're going to get along great. I was like, cool, sounds awesome. And you asked if there was anything else that I wanted to hunt here and I was like, you know, I'd love to hunt buffalo, if it's possible, if it's something that's nearby. You know, I don't want it to be a hassle.

Speaker 1: 18:49

It is. It's nearby, it's just a little bit of a drop asshole and it is.

Speaker 2: 18:56

It's neat boy, it's just, yeah, a little bit of a draw, yeah, uh. So, as it turns out, these broadheads I'd been shooting, um, are your company. Yeah, yeah, so I've been shooting cayuga pilot cut broadheads and I ended up getting to hunt with the man himself, um, with cayuga adventures. So pretty, pretty incredible, kind of a a circular, circular story there. But, man, this is such a different, different world and I started out talking about the night sky, but you know, the constellations that I'm seeing here aren't the same stars that I see at home no, you know so it's.

Speaker 2: 19:28

It's just disorienting. The trees are different, the birds are different, like there's almost no species at all that also exist in north america, you know. So everything is brand new to me here.

Speaker 1: 19:42

It's really amazing yeah, I see, like what we take for granted here and you're asking me questions about and I'm, yeah, I take for granted and I'm not not used to that, but it's good, like good, to show you the show you new stuff and you take it all in and you look at, look at things differently to what I. I look at them. Yeah, you know.

Speaker 2: 20:08

So I'm learning a lot about, uh, about the style of stocking that's required here as well. These trees, you know they're not. They're not conifers, they're not pine trees and fir trees, so they don't have limbs that go all the way to the ground, they're just stems and then the leaves are up in the air, and then a lot of this country burns every year.

Speaker 2: 20:30

So we're, so we're hunting a lot of these burn scars and there's nothing on the ground and we're trying to sneak up, they say, your white legs coming yeah, well, they're covered in they're covered in mud today, my legs are we're all right. But yeah, trying to sneak up on on these, these bulls in this relatively wide, open country, just kind of going from one tree to the next and wait until he turns away a little bit, it's tough, it is super tough. Yeah, some pretty crunchy leaves out here, oh, everything's crunchy.

Speaker 1: 21:05

The grass is crunchy.

Speaker 2: 21:07

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 21:07

The burnt stubble's crunchy. Yeah, the leaves are crunchy. Yeah, it's just. You've got to make ground when you can.

Speaker 2: 21:13

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 21:14

And get into a position and yeah, it's hard with no grass cover at times, but it'll happen. We'll find a bull in a position where we can make it happen. We tried a couple of times here today and it was nearly there, but we just got busted a little bit out in the open. We had to sort of use a couple of termite mounds to get in and it just it just didn't work for us. But yeah, that the hunting style can be very aggressive at times.

Speaker 1: 21:45

You know, like when it's on it, it's on you. You can make 10 meters straight up, like just crack straight in 10 metres, and then other times, like I showed you today, you might need to shuffle your feet and not cross yourself up because you might need to make that extra 5 yards or 10 yards and then real slow and then he might turn and you'll get a shot. We tried to intercept a buff there, the Savo, but he sort of caught a bit of sideways movement and busted us about 70 yards out. And that's hard as well. But you're trying to get in front of them as they're moving, because they move super fast.

Speaker 2: 22:25

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 22:25

And getting to a position where you can try and get them to come to you. But that's all about the challenge.

Speaker 2: 22:31

What's Arvo mean?

Speaker 1: 22:32

Afternoon.

Speaker 2: 22:33

Afternoon, but it also kind of means evening, right?

Speaker 1: 22:37

Yeah, anything after like 12 o'clock or anything when you drink a beer, you know? Yeah, whenever you crack a beer, it's the afternoon.

Speaker 2: 22:45

Yeah, but up here in Arnhem Land it's dry, so we didn't bring any beers with us.

Speaker 1: 22:52

Yeah, no. Yeah dry communities up here, which is all right. That would be good. It would give me a week of dry-out time yeah.

Speaker 2: 23:00

Yeah, so yeah, we're going to continue doing updates on how this hunt is going, what I'm learning, what I'm seeing, and, and we'll just continue on with this. So this will be part one, and I hope that that you'll follow along and and uh and sort of join us on this adventure. I wish everybody could have this experience that I'm having, because so many australians never even get to see this country, like it's so remote. It takes such skill and gear even to get here. Yeah, it's just a phenomenal opportunity and it's not at all lost on me how much effort you put into making it happen.

Speaker 1: 23:48

Yeah, no, that's all right, mate. It's a bit of a drive, but it's not nothing unreasonable. I don't think not for us in australia, you know, like we're, we're used to driving sort of well. I am living remote, I'm used to driving sort of big k's and it was a good bit of an adventure for me too, because I haven't been across to the territory for 10 years. So it was good to make it happen. And, yeah, it's good to show you around some stuff and we'll yeah see what um happens tomorrow yeah, well, I'm sure it's going to be sure it's going to be an exciting day.

Speaker 2: 24:21

uh, we kind of we found a spot where there's a bunch of buffalo and we're going to get in there. There's also, you know, opportunities to find some wild boar up here, and then there's a few other feral species around. And, yeah, these traditional owners who are kind enough to let us hunt, want some meat, so we need to get that done for them.

Speaker 1: 24:46

That's your job. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:49

And you caught a barramundi and a Saratoga today. We didn't even talk about fishing. No, we didn't.

Speaker 1: 24:54

Yeah, I caught a barra off the top middle of the day, which is pretty cool. I hooked. Oh no, I got two other buffs off the top and, yeah, I caught a toga and I didn't think they had toga in these systems this far east. I knew there was toga in the territory, but I didn't think they were here.

Speaker 2: 25:14

And if you don't know what a Saratoga is, don't feel bad, because I didn't know either, but do look it up because that is a really beautiful fish. It reminds me of an arapaima with more color.

Speaker 1: 25:26

I've never seen an arapaima before, but yeah, they're beautiful, like all them pink dots on them.

Speaker 2: 25:32

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 25:33

And gold, like gold and pink. And he just screamed out of that snag and just like, yeah, yeah, if you're a frog, like he was gone, yeah, bad place to be a frog, yeah. Middle of the day too, like that's what I like. So yeah. I can't help myself. I have to go check these billabongs out and I just yeah, my eyes light up, I have to throw a little in there. You know.

Speaker 2: 25:57

So all right, everybody, we'll catch up with you after, after our hunting day tomorrow, day two. Day two is one for the books. So how did we start out, matty? We?

Speaker 1: 26:16

got up pretty casually Heavy dew last night or earlier this morning. It was pretty hot overnight when we went to bed.

Speaker 2: 26:25

Yeah, it was probably 90 degrees yeah whatever that is in Celsius.

Speaker 1: 26:33

I I mean, we could say it in celsius, but yeah yeah, it was.

Speaker 2: 26:37

It was plenty hot. Uh, you had bought these uh rechargeable fans, um, and I'm sleeping in a cot with a mosquito netting over the top of it, and I got that fan rigged up in the mosquito netting so it's like right over my head, blowing down the length of my body.

Speaker 1: 26:53

It's pretty gourmet. How's it on your nuts, does it?

Speaker 2: 26:56

get to your nuts. You know my grandma listens to this show, so I'm going to back off of that. Yeah, yeah, but no, it's a very comfortable way to sleep, very comfortable way to sleep.

Speaker 1: 27:08

Yeah, I had to rig mine up and sort of, um, we tried to do it, uh, the other night and um, yeah, I, I sort of done a bit of a mischief and we had a bit of smoke coming out of it a little snap, tackle, pop and smoke rolling out of it, trying to plumb it into the electrical system on your truck, which is very cool.

Speaker 2: 27:31

And you were saying, man, that uh, that most of these pickups or utes, uh, that have canopies on the back will have a refrigerator in them here uh, yes, yeah, it's very, very common, very common even, yeah, even on the back of the you'll get the uh brand called angle.

Speaker 1: 27:50

That's well known. It's been around since mid 90s or late 90s and, um, yeah, I had one, a 40 liter angle. I bought it second hand when I was in the territory 10 years ago and it sat on the back of the ute for two or three years rain, hail and shine, um, no protection, just plugged in to a dual battery system and I had cold bees. Wherever I went. It was red, it was the color of red dirt and dust and whatnot, and it just it keeps going.

Speaker 2: 28:19

It's still going to this day you know, we use coolers for everything, and I can see a lot of applications where, if you've got power and the ability to regenerate power whether that's through solar panels or an engine or whatever you might be able to save weight altogether by just running a fridge.

Speaker 1: 28:43

Well, you do, and like ice, generally runs out it does, yeah, for sure it melts. So if you can keep stuff cool for like as long as, yeah, well, as long as you've got power, it will run. So it was like the other day I set the portable solar panel out in the sun there and yeah, we'll, we'll run more than the fridge just on the the sun on the solar blanket yeah, yeah, and that wasn't just recharge.

Speaker 2: 29:10

That was what was coming directly off the panel yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, anyhow. So yeah, we had a. We had a chill morning, had a toasty. What's a toasty toasted sandwich? A toasted sandwich, yeah, so like it kind of like a grilled cheese sandwich, but with a little slice of ham in there good breakfast.

Speaker 1: 29:28

What's a grilled cheese sandwich? It's a cheese, it's a toasty. Okay, same same thing right here yeah.

Speaker 2: 29:37

So yeah, uh, just different, different names for stuff we're learning these uh, we, uh, we take off, take a little rip through an area that we hadn't been to yesterday, found a great big scrub bull.

Speaker 1: 29:56

Yeah, there's a nice white Brahman scrub bull with a really big set of horns on him and he sort of raised my eyebrows and you were trying to get me to come back to camp to grab me a bow. But no.

Speaker 2: 30:13

The mission was to get you onto a buff, so we we cruised past them and and left them we did and went kind of back to the area where we ended up finding them yesterday afternoon and found uh, found several buffalo but we found a a real big bull, mature bull kind of, prime of his life, incredibly muscular. Looked like a rhinoceros out there you know, honestly like they're really a formidable looking animal.

Speaker 1: 30:45

They are, but they're pretty intimidating when you're really close, which you got to experience.

Speaker 2: 30:50

Yes, yeah and yeah, we'll get into that, but there are two smaller bulls up there with him. Um, talk me through the stock and the situation and kind of the problem solving that we had to go through there well, yeah, we, we uh spotted this buff.

Speaker 1: 31:08

Well, yeah, we spotted this buff ways out. We thought he was by himself. Well, he was by himself, but we pulled the ute up and we had to circle around and get the wind right, like you sort of do Get on a pad to get out there.

Speaker 2: 31:24

And a pad is like a game trail.

Speaker 1: 31:26

Yeah, a trail for years. Yeah, so yeah.

Speaker 2: 31:29

We get out there and discover there's another two younger bulls with them and this is quite an open savannah plains, which is like an open grassland plain with a few trees and a lot of termite mounts and it's got patchy burn that when it, when it opens up like that and you've got the crisp white bark, that stark white bark of those gum trees and the burned ground and all these termite mounds, it looks like a cemetery with all the termite mounds it does, it's got a real eerie, somber. Look to the place.

Speaker 1: 32:11

Oh, yeah, yeah, it does like there's. Yeah, you're right, it is like a cemetery and the contrast between the the black burnt ground and the white gums yeah and then you've got the brown grass that's remaining, that's un unburnt, and then the green trees and then you've got this, this fresh green that's coming up out of the burns and places yeah which, uh, you guys call pick yeah, green pick, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 32:37

So sweet little green shoots of grass, which obviously all the buff that we've seen feeding, are out on the and that big bull had a spot that was, you know, like 20 by 20 yards of pick that he was living in. You know he was pretty happy to be right there for quite a while.

Speaker 1: 33:01

Yeah, he'd done a couple of circles around in this one spot. We were just standing next to one tree, basically out in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, and we're just hopefully either he's going to feed towards us at 100 yards, yeah, at 100 yards, yeah, he's either going to feed towards us so or feed into a better position that we can make a move. But we've also got two younger bulls to our right that we have to watch. We don't want to, we didn't want to spook them and they're edging closer and closer to some marginal wind right yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 33:36

And another thing that we talked about before we left is no matter what, we've got to kill a buffalo today to bring some meat to the aboriginal traditional owners here, because that's what they'd ask for. So in my mind, I'm watching this big bull that we want to shoot and I'm looking at these younger bulls and I'm thinking, you know, if that big bull gets far enough away that I feel like I can crank off a shot at one of these smaller ones, I'm gonna do it. And they did come into 40 yards and I turned off to the right. You continued watching the big bull and I was watching those little ones and had had been range, finding all these trees and sort of getting ready for that opportunity, but before it happened, they winded us and took off in the wrong direction yeah, we were hoping they were going to cut out away from the bull, but as it sort of plays out, animals sometimes like to be in numbers for their yeah, numbers for safety.

Speaker 1: 34:39

Yeah, numbers for safety. And they went straight back over to the big bull and it was like, ah, fuck.

Speaker 2: 34:44

Yeah, yeah, and he didn't love them being right there. You know, he kind of threatened one of them off and then they headed for water and he started following along behind them and figured that he kind of had enough food and that he needed some water too. But he was back about 100, 120 yards away from them and it was pretty evident that he was going to follow the same pad or trail that they were on. So we thought, well, if we can kind of parallel these younger bulls and find a place to slip in there and get ahead of this big one, he might be able to walk right past us and we get a shot um, yeah, that was the plan that was the plan that was playing like what we're up to c or d, yeah I think it was it was developing.

Speaker 2: 35:35

Uh, so we, we tried that, we, we paced them for quite a ways and they ended up going right back to where we'd park the truck.

Speaker 1: 35:43

Yeah, they they didn't really like the the look of the ute. They were pretty uh yeah, and they're sort of pretty shy around it they they don't have big birth around that around the ute and didn't take their eye off.

Speaker 2: 35:54

Yeah yeah, and there's. There's a couple layers here I think that need to be unpacked. One is that you know, as we talked about yesterday, we're more remote here than probably anywhere that you could be in america. You know maybe alaska, but probably there's nowhere in america that you could be this remote, in lower 48, incredibly remote. There is a chance that these buffalo have never seen people before. Oh, there's a big chance. However, they also do a lot of mustering around here. Can you describe what mustering is?

Speaker 1: 36:28

because we're in the mustering grounds where we're camped yeah, so they had had the buffalo, prices were up for live export, and mustering means rounding them up, putting them in yards and trucking them out. So there's a wild buffalo that they're setting up big yards and they're running them in with a helicopter and bikes and cars, put them in a set of yards, they process them, put them on road trains, which is like a semi for you, but we just run three or four trailers which you've seen.

Speaker 2: 37:03

So think of a semi truck with a with a cattle trailer on it. Now put four of those cattle trailers in a row, which is why you, you guys, have radios in your vehicles, because if you come up behind one of them things you know you've got to kind of ask if you need to get around them.

Speaker 1: 37:23

Yeah, in some stages, yeah, what about the bull catchers? So the bull catchers here like're usually uh, toyo lancers, with the roof chopped off, they've got a lot of metal bar work up the sides plates and they have a hydraulic arm on the front so they can run cattle or buffalo out on the flats, like where we've. We are where the smooth flats are, and they can chase them around and put this arm, lock the arm around their head so they can get them into the yard, especially them rogue bulls. The cows and calves usually run well with the like with the helicopter and into the the yards once they're running with a mob.

Speaker 2: 38:11

But you have them rogue lone bulls that don't like to be told what to do, so they the only way to sort of get them is is to do that and there's folks here who have bought entire ranches or cattle stations from the money that they've made going out and catching feral cattle and wild buffalo for this live export market yes, yeah, that's correct, they've.

Speaker 1: 38:39

They've done really well when the market's up and there's plenty of animals around and everyone does well, like the to's do well, the people that are in mustering do really well, and it creates a job and it's in basically an industry as well yeah, and the tos again are traditional owners, the the to that we talked to here, who gave us permission to hunt here.

Speaker 2: 39:03

He said that because the live export prices are so low right now that he was looking at hiring a helicopter to come in and cull 3,000 head of buffalo off this place yeah, that's right, because, uh, he's not liking the um, the damage they're doing to the swamp lands and the spring systems.

Speaker 1: 39:22

Yeah, um, so that's what they? Yeah, that's what they do if the export market isn't up. Yeah, um, and the buffalo numbers breed. So the country can only handle so much right.

Speaker 2: 39:37

Yeah, you know a lot of this stuff gets complicated, and I think it's worth talking about because you could look at this as like the adventure of a lifetime which it is and you could look at it as an incredible hunting opportunity and an opportunity that should be protected and conserved so more people can do it in future generations. And then you also have to consider that this is an animal that isn't native here and, if overpopulated, can do a lot of damage to the habitat yeah, they do they.

Speaker 1: 40:08

They do damage into the water lilies and the water systems and create erosion off the escarpments and erosion around the riverbanks and stuff like that. So you'll never get rid of them. But in some aspects numbers do have to be controlled.

Speaker 2: 40:38

So the reason that I bring this up is because there's a chance that these buffalo that saw your ute today have previously had attempts to muster them at some point. They might have seen land cruisers coming after them, helicopters coming after them, but that might be their only experience ever with humans.

Speaker 1: 40:48

Yeah, that's correct with humans. Yeah, that's correct. Like they, they might have been tried to be mustered, or I'm not sure when they stopped mustering, like not sure when the cattle, um, or the buffalo price dropped out and they stopped. But like I dare say them, mature bulls were seen, have seen musters yeah they have seen musters.

Speaker 1: 41:09

They have been chased from somewhere and hey look, they might. They might not have originated from here. Like them bulls, just get on the walk and they wander. They can wander, so they could have been pushed out from somewhere else. That's been mustering right and turned up back here because there's not fences there's no fences. Yeah, there's hardly like yeah, there's no fences yeah, so it would be.

Speaker 2: 41:38

It would be really easy for those bulls to cruise a really long ways out in this country oh, they can.

Speaker 1: 41:43

They can walk and walk and walk and walk, yeah yeah, their feet are enormous they have to be that big to hold their weight in the water. Yeah, have to have surface area.

Speaker 2: 41:55

But it is not an exaggeration to say that some of the tracks we saw are the size of dinner plates.

Speaker 1: 42:01

Yeah, that's what they say, yeah.

Speaker 2: 42:03

And like zero exaggeration in that at all. Yeah, so imagine a bovine, like a buffalo, cow type animal with a hoof the size of a dinner plate, and that's what we're dealing with. And this bull that we're looking at, he is so muscled up and you know, just an incredible, incredible animal. And they tip their head back and their horns sweep out and then come straight back so that their horns are more or less on the same angle as the slope of their face. And when they tilt their head back it's I don't know, it's like they're shaped like a bullet or like a falcon. That's dive bombing, I guess.

Speaker 1: 42:55

Yeah, it's like I don't know if it's evolution or they're made like that so if they're running they tilt their head back and they know, if they put their nose through there, that their horns aren't going to get caught up or something like that. It's on that same plane, so to get caught up, or something like that. You know it's on that same plane, so to get away.

Speaker 2: 43:13

Yeah, another part of it is that their, their pupils are horizontal. So out of the the bottom of their eye, that's how they see distance and out of the top of their eye, that's how they see close. So when their head's down, they can look out of the top of their eye and see what they're eating. And then, when they tilt their head up, they can look out of the top of their eye and see what they're eating. And then, when they tilt their head up, they can look out the bottom and they can see stuff that's far away. So when they tilt their head back, you know you need to be paying attention. And then, as we found on some of these other stocks and obviously it's stuff that you already knew, but their peripheral vision, or their provincial vision, you call it is- excellent huh provisional provisional yeah, or whatever you said.

Speaker 1: 43:58

Yeah, yeah, peripheral, that's it. Okay, that's how educated I am yeah, it's, uh, it's fantastic.

Speaker 2: 44:06

And actually, when you're directly behind these animals, if they tilt their head to the side a little bit, you can see their eyeball and they can see out of it. So they've got probably 270 degrees of vision and you can get away with way more movement than I would ever have guessed, until about 150 yards, and then you can't get away with much at all. And that becomes difficult because and even though you said it isn't bad I feel like I'm covered in flies that are crawling inside my ears and my nose and my eyes, and I can handle them boogieing around my face for the most part, but once they get inside my nose, man, I kind of got to do something about it.

Speaker 1: 44:48

You're just slow and smooth yeah, you can't go fast. No erratic movement yeah, but the flies aren't even bad, like I don't even know that we have flies around.

Speaker 2: 44:58

Yeah yeah, you've definitely seen worse, but I'm not used to having flies crawl on my nose while I'm hunting.

Speaker 1: 45:04

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 45:05

Yeah, and I find it distracting.

Speaker 1: 45:12

You've just got to walk past it. You've just got to look past it. Yeah, you know, no, you're doing well, you're doing well.

Speaker 2: 45:21

It's a thing, but it's also important to to talk about in terms of practice. Um, I think a lot of people practice under the most ideal circumstances that they can make for themselves. They're not tired, um, they're standing on flat ground, they're wearing comfortable clothes, they're probably not wearing a pack and they definitely don't have additional stressors and distractions like bugs crawling on them so I think people should find ways to to stress themselves out for practice because or just put themselves in uncomfortable positions.

Speaker 1: 45:53

Yeah, that's it. Just make uncomfortable positions for yourself and then shoot. Yeah, you shoot your bow and see if you can get you still on when you, yeah, when you're uncomfortable yeah, good, good metric for performance, okay.

Speaker 2: 46:13

So at this stage, these bulls have passed your truck and have gone off into the brush towards the water, and we've crossed the road and are hooking back in towards this creek system where there's a couple wallows and some shallow, muddy water. As we're going down the creek, we saw a young buffalo that was a different bull from these three that we've been talking about. He's down in the water. He gets up and leaves we didn't scare him or anything like that and we start working our way down this system. We see the two bulls that are our troublemakers and they've moved off and gone into the brush and we're trying to think of you know kind of what our move. Our move is where this bull is, because we can't see him right now and I was able to spot him back in the shadows of some brush and we thought, you know, he's going to come into this water right here. You know that this bull's been out, he's hot, he's thirsty, this bull's going to come to water. And we got up into some paper trees Is that what they're called?

Speaker 1: 47:20

Yeah, some small paper barks, yeah, paper barks.

Speaker 2: 47:22

Yeah. So, folks, you can think of these like aspens a little bit. You know small diameter trees, and there's only, you know, seven or eight of them right there, and we get set up and now we can see this bull and lo and behold, he starts coming. Yeah, what was going through your mind?

Speaker 1: 47:45

Oh no, I was pretty relaxed. I thought, yeah, we're in the right position here. I got you to check your distances and, yeah, he was coming our way. So it was like, rightio, we're in the right spot, the wind's good. For once, we finally got something worked out with this wind, like it hadn't done us. So I was just hoping that, basically hoping that would hold out. And I thought, rightio, if we just stand here, he's going to come down into the water and at some point there's going to come down into the water and at some point there's going to be an opportunity. So he's slowly come down and he's on to it like he.

Speaker 1: 48:24

He didn't really like the look at the car or the you, and he kept looking back and he was take a couple of steps and you'd stop and you'd look around and he was real, like, real alert. So, yeah, we couldn't really, yeah, we couldn't really move or do anything. We were just in these paperbacks, set up, real good, we weren't standing right in front of the paperbacks, we were in amongst them and we had shooting lanes and uh, yeah, he come in and and drunk, um, and he was like basically over the ledge. We couldn couldn't see, we couldn't see his head, we can see the back of his body, and there's just no shot at third yards.

Speaker 1: 49:01

So, we just had to wait.

Speaker 2: 49:03

Yeah, and from where I was, if he would have turned broadside, I did have the shot.

Speaker 1: 49:09

Oh.

Speaker 2: 49:10

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 49:10

The shot was there, it was a.

Speaker 2: 49:12

I had it, but he was quartering two, and that he was quartering two, and that's just not a shot that anybody should take. It's not a shot that I'm going to take.

Speaker 1: 49:20

Not the first arrow. Yeah, you know.

Speaker 2: 49:23

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 49:23

Not the first arrow. There was no rushing. You can't rush them situation. He's a big bull. The bone structures on these things are huge. He's fit. He's in his prime. Yeah, so you need to put a good first shot on him, because the first shot's easier than getting a second shot.

Speaker 2: 49:41

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 49:42

If you need a second shot.

Speaker 2: 49:43

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 49:43

And we strive just to have one arrow. One arrow kills.

Speaker 2: 49:46

Yep. So he drinks for a little bit while he's quartering to a 30. And then he gets down in the water and starts to come up and there's a log coming down into the water and I think, well, if he comes on this side of the log, he's going to be at 20 yards or less and like this is it. This is going to happen.

Speaker 2: 50:10

My heart rate was at 125, according to the old Garmin and I was trembling. I was trying to trying to breathe and calm myself down. I was thinking about my shot process over and over again. I wasn't looking at him, I was trying to keep like dangerous thoughts out of my mind, you know, and and on he comes, he gets to this log and he takes a step over it. I thought, oh yeah, like it's happening, yep. And then he started to pick up another foot and his foot hit that log and he stopped and he turned and looked at us and we're at 19 yards right now, right, and I haven't moved other than like, like the little you know, just trembles of your shirt was moving.

Speaker 2: 51:02

You were shaking excitement yeah, um, but but that's not it, like there's, there's wind in the leaves and stuff like that. But you know, like you pointed out, he probably drinks there every day and if you add something new to that environment, it'd be like if I put a new piece of furniture in your living room and you came home, you'd notice it right away, right like that didn't used to be there, and that's right.

Speaker 1: 51:27

And he was super cautious coming in. It wasn't like he just padded straight in and went straight into the water like he was thirsty, he needed to drink, but he was so cautious coming in so that did sort of play on my mind thinking, oh, like he might look around too much and pin us.

Speaker 2: 51:47

If I had to drink water with my lips to the water in places that had crocodiles, I'd be pretty cautious too.

Speaker 1: 51:55

But there's buffalo using that waterhole every day and they're wallowing in the middle of it. There's no crocs in it.

Speaker 2: 52:01

Sure, there's no crocs in that size of waterhole right, but animals are cautious when they come to water, and that that's the reality of it. And then he had he'd had these two young bulls run past him, so he's a little bit alert from that. He'd seen your truck parked on the road, which wasn't a normal thing, so he was additionally alert from that. And then you add in uh, you know a feature of a couple guys standing there in the bushes that you know he, he just wasn't sure what it was and he looked at us for a long time there in the water, yeah and uh, and then he, he busted out of there, but he never really figured out what we were no, he, he didn't.

Speaker 1: 52:42

I. I was hoping he was going to bust out and stand on top of the the bank at 30 yards and sort of give us a broadside shot there looking back over at us, but it just never eventuated. Yep, um, and then he went out to sort of 70, 80 yards from the border and stood there with his head back and trying to look, trying to find, trying to see Um, but he never really picked us up.

Speaker 1: 53:05

No, and he he knew something wasn't right and he got out of there, but he never knew what was what it was.

Speaker 2: 53:12

So he fades off into the swamp. We get back in the truck, drive around, uh, different part of the swamp and get out, start hiking. And we're just hiking the edge of this swampy area and find another nice buffalo in there that's bedded in the water. The wind was wrong, blow him out. We stalked a hog and the wind was wrong, I blew him out. Um, we stalked a hog and, uh, the wind was wrong, I blew him out.

Speaker 2: 53:40

Yeah, so we head back the opposite direction to try to get better wind and as we're moving along, this great big boar starts coming down towards us, towards another little wallow on the edge of the swamp. And uh, he said, you know, knock an arrow, get ready. And I was like, holy crap, I'm like fishing everything out. You know, I wasn't like mentally prepared at all. And uh, he came into 25 yards and I missed.

Speaker 2: 54:06

Um, I shot two inches under his back, hit him right through the pork chops and and you know that's that's a very, very non-lethal shot. Um, and you know, I'm I'm embarrassed by that, but my, my reaction to it was to figure out what the problem was and why it happened, and I think that that that's a part of the shooting process that I would encourage everybody to try for themselves, whether you hit exactly where you intend to or not. Try to reflect on your process and if it went well, figure out why it went well so you can do it again. And if it didn't, reflect on why it didn't go well and don't do that again.

Speaker 1: 54:48

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 54:50

For me it was rushing the shot.

Speaker 1: 54:52

Yeah, yeah, and that's one sort of thing that is, it's usually not the equipment's fault, it's operator error. So always ask yourself why. You know we knew your bow was shooting great here at camp. You shot a blue straight through a termite mound here and you pinwheeled that leaf. So it's, we're careful with your equipment. You know it gets rubbed here and there on a stick and a branch, but not enough to knock it out. So that's one thing for people. They sort of got to ask themselves why did that happen? And be open to accepting why it did happen. Like you said, I rushed the shot, which is great. There are some people, some people don't want to accept that and say no, it's equipment's fault or something like that. And once they can accept that they fucked up. Yeah, um, yeah, they'll, they'll be 10, 10 steps ahead of them.

Speaker 2: 55:49

Yeah, ahead next time so, uh, something like that can take away a guy's confidence pretty easily, but for me, being able to think about why it happened, make a plan for not letting that happen again, it's not going to erode my confidence. You know, we're going to move on and that's exactly what we did. Yeah, we moved on. So then what happens?

Speaker 1: 56:15

Well, after that we kept poking along the edge of the swamp and the wind just was not great for on that swamp it was like it was coming off the flats, it was hot and it was hitting the cool water and it was actually separating both ways. So it didn't matter which way we went, we'd have wind in our face but then wind up our ass. So we pulled the pin and I felt I was too game rich to actually be in there with bad wind. So we pulled the pin and it was the middle of the day. So we went back to the car or the ute and got in it and went for a drive out onto a track that we hadn't been to yet and just see if we could find a bull by himself standing underneath a shady tree somewhere away from water with some cover, that we can make something happen and that's exactly what we found.

Speaker 2: 57:07

Yeah, a big old bull by himself standing in the shade of a tree. So now it's time to get the wind right that same old story, but there was a slope coming downhill.

Speaker 2: 57:23

There was a little bit of a saddle there and he was on this ridge that went down into the saddle. And I'm not talking about big terrain features, this is pretty subtle, but it was enough to give me confidence that the wind was going to stay consistent and accelerate as it went over that ridge, get drawn through that saddle and keep going. So we went all the way around and then hooked back in on him and, uh, started actually tromping back down the road a little bit, which was more or less because it didn't have leaves in it.

Speaker 1: 57:58

It was the quietest route that we could take in there yeah, we sorted on 270 degrees around easily around him from the yeah from the car or 180 sorry, yeah, probably 180 to get to come back in where the yeah along the road, because he said, like it was, it was quietest it's also 105 degrees at this point, yeah it was yeah, 39 or 40 or something like yeah temp.

Speaker 2: 58:22

We're saying yeah and the sand was burning the bottom of my feet through the soles of my boots. So we get in there, gosh probably to 70 yards or so, and that's when we 70, 80 yards, that's that's when we really had to start stalking, and this bull was initially facing away. He turned around and faced, quartering towards us, which wasn't ideal, but he was periodically closing his eyes and he was chewing his cud and we started moving tree to tree. Um, when we got to gosh 50 yards, I'd say that's where the the real stock began, and at that point there was only, I think, two trees between us and him to use as cover yeah, we, we had all them shrubby but that were like floating in the wind and sort of moving and distracting his eyes.

Speaker 1: 59:20

There was movement there as well.

Speaker 2: 59:23

But yeah, two or three solid trees using now is that, rather than going left foot forward, right foot forward, you push your left foot forward and then you bring your right foot up to match it and then you put your left foot forward again, and that's what you mean by shuffle. If you do that, then you don't get caught with your legs crossed and you don't get caught in a position where you can't shoot from, and it's about as quiet as you can move and still be ready. So that's what I started doing, with my bow up in front of my face to block out the silhouette of my big white face, and the movements are as slow as you can make them.

Speaker 1: 1:00:16

They're slow motion. It's like if you see something filmed in 240 frames per second.

Speaker 2: 1:00:22

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:00:24

Super slow and smooth movements.

Speaker 2: 1:00:26

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:00:26

Because that's what all the trees do when the wind blows, that's what all the shrubs do. They don't have any sharp movements. Like yeah, I think animals pick up on when you stop. It's not when, like if you stop really slow, they don't pick that up. But if it's a real sharp stop, it's that snap yeah, I, uh.

Speaker 2: 1:00:52

I was trying to think of my legs like they were the second hand on a clock and like that. About that speed is what I was trying to do and it took I I have no sense of of how long it took, so anything that I said would be a lie yeah, we're on that bull for an hour and a half yeah, and, and probably an hour of that was moving the last 30 or 40 yards yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:01:15

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, think of that. Taking an hour to walk 30 or 40 yards, that's what we did, and the crunchiest of the crunchy leaves these things that kind of look like palm fronds that are incredibly loud and just keep moving forward as slow as we can. Wait for the gust of wind to come through to create a little bit of background noise and use those for movement. Those also are moving the trees around you, so it's less obvious when you're moving if the vegetation is too. And yeah, we got to 25 yards. Had to move laterally quite a bit to get a better angle on him and talk to me a little bit about moving directly towards an animal versus moving side to side so sideways movement is they'll pick that up a lot like trees.

Speaker 1: 1:02:21

Don't move sideways yeah but depth of field movement you can get away with, yeah, a lot more than you can left and right, because, yeah, you don't see trees walk sideways yeah basically, yeah, you know so those lateral movements were were even slower yet.

Speaker 2: 1:02:38

Oh yeah, yeah, if they could be um you got caught?

Speaker 1: 1:02:43

you got caught in a bit of a pig digging I did 25 yards or 28?

Speaker 2: 1:02:51

the only only place that I could go was where a pig had rooted out this hole and the sand was kind of sloughing off as I'm stepping in it and I was like, oh geez, so augured my way out of that pickle and yeah, oh, you done, you done.

Speaker 1: 1:03:05

Unreal, going through that like you could only. You can only do what you can do yeah and if it's slow and steady and smooth, well yeah you got through it.

Speaker 2: 1:03:16

So now we're up there and there's a. There's a shooting gap that's probably 18 inches wide um, not all of which is is kill zone, but where I needed to hit I could see and, and there was, you know, a few inches of margin of error around that, and we were still able to whisper back and forth a little bit and I said I can make this shot, and I drew back, shot. The bull spun out and he did like a half circle and stopped. So now he's at 30 yards. I reloaded an arrow, drew shot again and within seconds of that second shot he fell down and seconds later he was dead.

Speaker 1: 1:04:11

Yeah, that's right, and like your first shot. Well, we assessed it, but your first shot was on the money and done the job, so he probably didn't need that backup arrow, but he gave us a chance. Yeah, so, and you took it and you hit him at unreal again and he's dead on his feet right there.

Speaker 2: 1:04:31

And both shots actually ended up being double lung shots, both of which went through the top of the heart.

Speaker 2: 1:04:36

Yep up being double lung shots, both of which went through the top of the heart. Yep and uh. You know we talked about broadheads yesterday. Both of these broadheads are still sharp and usable. You know, we'll touch the edges up a little bit. Uh, they, they both went through rib bones. They both got total and are ready to go after going through a muddy water buffalo. I counted the annual eye on his horns and, although I'm not an expert at it, I think he's 13 years old.

Speaker 1: 1:05:10

Yeah, he's a really old bull. I'm no expert on aging any animals, but I just know he's a real old bull on aging any animals. But um, I just know he's a real old bull. He's got hardly. Oh, he's got really worn down teeth to his gum lines on one side of his mouth.

Speaker 2: 1:05:23

He's missing a couple of front teeth yeah, the teeth that I normally pull to send into the lab to see how old they are yeah, they're missing from this animal right and, yeah, his, his molars are completely worn down.

Speaker 2: 1:05:37

He had an injured back left leg that had healed over. You know whether that was from him. You know breaking it, stepping in a hole or a croc, getting a hold of him. Who knows? He had previously broken a rib, yep. So the broadhead went through where this rib had rebroken and calcified, had broken broken previously and calcified and it was a great big knot, broadheaded, plowed right through that.

Speaker 2: 1:06:05

Uh, yeah, pretty incredible, um. So besides taking pictures and um and and and taking meat for uh, for the to, we also pulled out a, a sawzall, and we did a necropsy to look at this kill zone and look at exactly what it had happened and took it apart layer by layer, so that you're not just making assumptions like, oh, this is what it is like, no, let's, let's physically look at this and and then rebuild that image of where you need to be aiming on these animals to get these lethal shots yeah, that's right, and, like I, I would hope that, um, like everyone else could do the same thing, like brad taught me about it and it's helped so much.

Speaker 1: 1:06:55

And in our bow hunting courses and every crit critter actually we shoot at Strathburn. Basically we open up and analyze just to see where that arrow's hit, what it's done. Why did it stay on its feet for 20 seconds and then another critter is shooting it over in six? Yeah, you know. So you get to see where your arrow is, you get to see the kill zone. We aiming too far back, we too far forward. You know, like this, all this shoot behind the crease well, I don't know about in the states, but I've in australia. I've never seen a. All the stuff we're opening up there's high and back behind the crease is the top of the lungs, but down at heart level. If you're behind the crease, on the crease, behind the crease, you're playing with gut. You're not even in the kill zone.

Speaker 2: 1:07:50

Yep, and it's not liver either.

Speaker 1: 1:07:53

No, yeah, no, and it all depends, like this hot country. It all all depends too if they've gone and drunk yeah and they've got a full stomach of water, so that pushes the internals forward again yeah their guts comes, swells up, pushes all the vitals forward as well yeah, uh, no, it's.

Speaker 2: 1:08:13

Anatomy is something that hunters need to. They need to study more, and they I don't want you to look at like line drawings or or graphics that somebody else has drawn like you need to like take the extra effort to find actual images, or or go to scientific journals, yeah, like find where those organs actually are.

Speaker 1: 1:08:40

Even if you get a critter on the ground, you've got to break it up anyway. So why not assess where the kill zone is before you break it up?

Speaker 2: 1:08:49

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:08:49

Like you and your buddies, can be all around if it's, and you're all there to help pack the elk out or whatnot. Why not assess them vitals and actually see what's happened where they actually sit, why that other arrow ricocheted off another bull, or how the bone is where the joints sit?

Speaker 2: 1:09:10

and if you can do it like, pop that front shoulder off and and do it while they're lying on the ground. Don't just gut the animal and then look at the organs after you've pulled them out no, no, do it all with the gut still in yeah because then it's all sitting in place, the lungs are going to be deflated.

Speaker 1: 1:09:29

If you've hit him through the lungs, yeah so, but you'll see where that that zone is and actually cut the organs out and leave the guts in, and then you can see the opening there where you have to put your arrow in and then, if you can fold that, that leg, that front leg, back over, so you can see where the triangle is and where your arrow has to be yeah, and even though these buffalo are a 1,200-plus pound animal, what's actually available there for the kill zone is about the size of the face of a Reinhardt target.

Speaker 1: 1:10:06

Yep.

Speaker 2: 1:10:07

Yep, it's not this giant target that most people imagine. The spine comes way lower than what most people think. I really encourage people to look at that. So you know, after that we took the meat and the heart and delivered it to the TO and he was stoked about that and we came back to camp. You did a little fishing, shot your bow, went for a little walk to patrol the area area, see if there's any critters around that needed hunting real quick yeah, I just wanted to say, if that bull want to come back onto that soak, yeah, lighten the other.

Speaker 2: 1:10:45

I uh I cut the cut the hide off of of the skull and you showed me a better way than what I'm used to for removing the lower jawbone. We got it all packaged up and, uh, that's. That's the end of day two, it is.

Speaker 1: 1:11:03

It's going to be a interesting trip, uh, for 3000ks, and we're not going to get to boil that out for a week and we've got to store it on the outside of the vehicle somehow, so it might be a bit smelly, yeah, and we'll get some weird, weird looks somewhat odiferous yeah, so we've got it wrapped up in a garbage bag and then taped you duct taped over the top of that so it looks like it's silver and uh, that's to keep the, the blow flies and maggots and stuff out of there.

Speaker 1: 1:11:33

Yeah, just trying to try to stop the maggots actually building in there. Obviously the meat's going to rot, but stop the maggots actually building in there. Obviously the meat's going to rot, but hopefully, if they don't get in there, it will sort of yeah, I don't know. Yeah, we'll see how we go.

Speaker 2: 1:11:45

We'll see but yeah, it's uh, when we do get to boil it, it's gonna be be a stinky hair deal you'll get to boil it yeah I'll be standing upwind, yeah, so thank you for a tremendous day.

Speaker 2: 1:12:02

I learned a lot, uh, and yeah, although the, the, the stalk and and hunt where I killed that bull was incredible, the, the previous stock on on that, that big buffalo that came into water and got so close to us when he turned the corner in that little wallow and and it looked like he was going to show up at at 19 yards, 18 yards and he did, and then when he saw us and he picks his head up and looked, um, I I felt, uh, pretty inadequate I was all right, you're in front of me, so I only had to push you forward and I could get out.

Speaker 2: 1:12:45

Yeah, but you know we don't have a backup rifle, you didn't even have your bow. Like the, the safety net there is is relatively low. I'm not saying that that the stakes are high. Like like water, buffalo are not Cape buffalo. They're well, while they're certainly capable of being aggressive, typically they're not. But just to be that close to an animal of that size, knowing what he could do and knowing that if, if it turns into that everything that's around me is a tree too small for me to climb, that if it turns into that everything that's around me is a tree too small for me to climb and all I've got is a bow, for a rifleman like myself, it was quite a feeling. It's a feeling and a hunt that I hope to always remember.

Speaker 1: 1:13:31

Yeah, I had the camera rolling at all times anyway so it would have made some good footage.

Speaker 2: 1:13:39

The cameraman never dies.

Speaker 1: 1:13:40

No, we're all good mate. You just hunt them with respect and don't put yourself in places that you don't think's gonna um be too dangerous and and whatnot, like we had plenty of cover there. Yeah, it was fine. Yeah, they're not.

Speaker 2: 1:13:54

They're going to come and attack you, but still the feeling of it is a big feeling.

Speaker 1: 1:13:59

Yes, yeah, they're a big animal.

Speaker 2: 1:14:01

Yeah, yeah, okay. So thus ends. We've got a big old cane toad next to us.

Speaker 1: 1:14:08

Are you going to fix them up tonight? They kept you awake a little bit, didn't they? Last night?

Speaker 2: 1:14:11

Yeah, we're going. Uh, yeah, that's the end of day two. Day three starts tomorrow and, folks, you'll you're gonna have to wait a week for that show to come out. I hope that you'll continue following along and I hope that you all get to do an adventure like this, because it's pretty special. It's not always going to exist in the world, but it still does right now. Bye, everybody.

Speaker 2: 1:14:37

I just want to take a second and thank everyone who's written a review, who has sent mail, who sent emails, who sent messages. Your support is incredible and I also love running into you at trade shows and events and just out on the hillside when we're hunting. I think that that's fantastic. I hope you guys keep adventuring as hard and as often as you can. Art for the Six Ranch Podcast was created by John Chatelain and was digitized by Celia Harlander. Original music was written and performed by Justin Hay, and the Six Ranch Podcast is now produced by Six Ranch Media. Thank you all so much for your continued support of the show and I look forward to next week when we can bring you a brand new episode.