A Top End trifecta: Buffalo, barra and boars

On a three-week trip through the centre of Australia and touring the Northern Territory with my partner Emma, I managed to gain access to a patch of land holding buffaloes and pigs. We were on a tight schedule, so I didn’t have a heap of time to explore the property, but things were looking promising for the future.

My best mate Corey later moved to Jabiru, forming the perfect excuse for a hunting trip and to catch up with him. A six-week touring/hunting trip was organised and come mid-August we were off touring the Kimberley, conquering Gibb River Road and exploring some of Australia’s most remote areas in the Top End. I then had seven days of hunting up my sleeve and couldn’t wait to get behind a rifle in search of a buff or some pigs.

The owner of the hunting land I got access to previously had organised a friend’s property for me to hunt for a few days, as well as try to catch a barra or two in the billabongs that run through the area. Driving the 30km corrugated road into the hut wasn’t ideal but as I got a look at the location, I started to get even more excited. An area so remote and so unknown to most people, surrounded by floodplains and swamps, that would get any keen hunter sitting on the edge of their seat.

Being the first time on the property, I was going to spend a lot of my time exploring rather than hunting, to get a good idea of my surrounds.

The first afternoon I had a look around for pigs but with little success. I did see a heap of sign and diggings beside the swamps and tracks as well as a few buffalo calves and cows feeding on the edge of the plains in the distance. I was after a buffalo bull so kept looking. I ended up coming up into a nice little stretch of billabong and just had to have a cast, I couldn’t simply drive past it.

A few bumps, follows and misses before it went quiet, and I decided to move on as a 4-5m salty cruised past looking for his next meal. A little way down the track I came across another little secluded waterhole. It was getting late in the afternoon, so I decided to have a few casts then head back to the hut and call it a night. First cast and I was on! I had always wanted to catch a barra and here it was, only a little fella but a great way to start the account. I landed a better fish a few casts later before calling it and heading back.

The following morning I headed off to check out some little swamps, walking thicker areas around the water searching for pigs that had bedded down for the day. I finally managed to bump a small mob of sows out of a patch of trees, but they gave me absolutely no shot opportunity as they slipped through the thick brush and escaped.

The swamp just up the track was an absolute textbook pig swamp: shallow, muddy with lily pads and surrounded by paperbark trees. It didn’t take long for me to find pigs, all of about two minutes, as I scanned the swamp with the binos and got a glimpse of one on the opposite side. The wind wasn’t ideal, but I had no other way so had to get as close as possible. I gained a bit of ground and soon worked out it wasn’t just one but nearly 20 pigs feeding and digging up the edge of the swamp. Taking a rest on the last tree that gave me any cover, I was about 120m from the mob, so took aim and let the .308 do its thing. Dropping the first pig on the spot, a couple of quick bolt cycles had two more on the deck before they managed to reach the safety of the nearby bush. I pulled them all together for a quick photo and moved on in hope of finding some more.

The following few days were slow going, with a lot of ground covered on foot. I passed up a few smaller buffaloes in search of something bigger. I managed to come across more pigs but was unable to get shots at them, although I did manage more barra in the local billabongs.

In the meantime, Emma had flown into Darwin to spend the remaining two weeks travelling with me before we started the drive back down south, so a quick trip in to collect her and back out to the property for the final two days of hunting.

It all came down to the last afternoon. We travelled out to the edge of the floodplains to sit and glass the area before dark in hope something decent would walk out. We saw a heap of donkeys, some cattle and a big salty that swam past in a little channel that ran through the middle of the plains, but no pigs and no buffs. The sun was setting fast and the light fading when my luck turned, and a bull stepped out of the bush 150m away. It’s amazing the size of these animals, and they still manage to move around the bush silently and pop out when you’re not expecting them. This was my chance. He wasn’t huge in horn size, but he was a bull and that’s all I wanted.

I grabbed the .30-06 and took off, making ground as quick as possible while keeping an eye out for anything that may spook my buff. I stalked to within 70m and found a decent tree for a rest. I put the cross-hairs on the top of his neck and squeezed the trigger, dropping him on the spot.

The light was fading fast, so I set him up for photos before removing his head along with meat for the property owner. A few beers around the fire while boiling out the skull was a perfect way to finish off a week’s hunting. Getting an invite back for the following year was even better!