Couple of mates and their dogs chasing the mighty sambar

This weekend was a long weekend so my mate and I made the most of it and headed out for a backpack hunt in the Victorian high country.

We loaded up our packs got our gundogs and drove the 8 hours to hunting country. arriving at 2am we slept at the car until 06:30 and then hiked in a few kilometres to spend 4 days amongst the great Australian sambar.

We made it to camp, sleeping under a rock ledge on the side of a cliff and headed Out to do some glassing and get a feel for the country. My goodness was it cold! It rained early in the day until around 11:30 when the snow kicked in. That wasn't so bad but the bitterly cold wind hust cut through like a knife.

Needless to say my gsp didn't enjoy her first experience of snow!
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We found some good country and waited out until late in the evening without seeing a thing so headed back to camp, struggled to get a fire going for about half an hour and settled in for an early night.

The next day we headed out in the morning and glassed but with freezing temps and that freezing wind nothing was out. We decided that they must be down at lower elevations getting away from the terrible weather so there was nothing to do but get down.

We dropped either side of a spur and early on both our dogs were indicating deer below us. I followed my gsp Ellies lead as she followed the scent of the deer below. I felt I was getting close and was constantly stopping and glassing through the thick bush. Ellie started getting more excited so I knew we were right on him, and right at that moment I slipped down the steep hill sliding 2 metres before being able to stop. When I came to rest I heard crashing about 50m away. I mad it down and saw the tracks of a mature sambar stag. Bad luck but I spose thats why they call it hunting!.

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We continued on and 15 mins later I heard a gun shot, "great my mate has taken a stag" I thought, wondering what it was I continued on. Not long after Ellie began indicating again, this time down low in the bottom of the Gully. <br />
We slowly moved along and all of a sudden I heard a crash down in the Gully. "bugger he's on to us" I thought. I moved to a clearing with a bit of a view of the opposing side of the Gully hoping to see him contouring up the other side while making his escape. After a few moments I did catch movement, nearly 200m away a stag was moving up the next spur, I chucked up the trusty old 270 in remmy 700 with 150gn super x pills and Squeezed off the shot as he came into a clearing between two trees.


At the shot he jumped and immediately ran down hill, a sure sign of a hit. The shot felt great but 200m offhand on a moving deer I wasn't sure on just how good. We got over to where I shot and I couldn't find a drop of blood, a bit perplexed I looked over to Ellie and she was sniffing down in the bottom of the Gully so I figured he had to be down there. I got down to the bottom and almost instantly found a great patch of blood

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About another 100 metres or so there he was, the shot had been on the money breaking his leg and taking out the lower heart. He was certainly no monster being quite a young animal and I've passed up bigger glassing but taking him bush stalking over my gsp made him feel like a giant.

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Once I removed the head and as much meat as I could carry I looked up. I was currently 35m from the river bottom and according to my Gps had 1.2km to camp with around 700 metres of elevation. Something along the lines of 4 feet up for every 6 feet horizontal. Needless to say it was a mammoth pack out back to camp with many stops on the way.

I eventually got there and though my mate and I forgot the flask of whiskey we celebrated that night with fresh sambar stag back steaks cooked over open flame and dipped in sweet chilli sauce and man was that amazing.

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He took a nice stag himself over his dog and we both packed out with some bone and some great memories.

I've been a red deer hunter my whole life and never got the allure of sambar, until now that is. It's not the animals themselves it's the adventure and the absolute rough rugged and unforgiving country that they live in that draws you in, needles to say I'm addicted.

Unfortunately I've got a wedding and honeymoon later this year so have no leave to do another trip, but come next year there will certainly be a few!


Ellie packing out some gear

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Mates stag

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Bone at camp

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Cool story. Done the hard yards and got a result. Awesome


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Incredible how far an animal can run with a heart shot, though i've never found it lying on the ground!

Cheers fellas, was a top hunt.

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Top work BH

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Brilliant trip mate, great result with you both getting a stag....well done on a 200 mtr off hand shot :thumbsup:

Great results in trying conditions, been chasing those mighty sambar over here as well, after a couple of biggie's we have caught on trail cam's. Hopefully one day soon we will get lucky.
Just have to keep trying!!!

Good stuff mate.

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Nice be good fun chasing Sambar in the big country.

How thin ya have to slice Sambar backsteaks to make them edible? 4 thou of an inch? :D

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Originally Posted by MikeB

Nice be good fun chasing Sambar in the big country.

How thin ya have to slice Sambar backsteaks to make them edible? 4 thou of an inch? :D

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Haha nah they were actually quite good, stags were only young so hadn't got real staggy.

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@Bavarian_Hunter, a friend of mine in Australia hunts the sambar with the hounds...that sounds like great sport?

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Originally Posted by EeeBees

@Bavarian_Hunter, a friend of mine in Australia hunts the sambar with the hounds...that sounds like great sport?

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Depends on the crew, on the whole quite a few people don't look upon them favourably because of a lot of ethics and illegal stuff that goes on with them.

There's stories of cars getting burnt out, cutting fences, hunting NP (which I've seen plenty of times), and lots use Gps trackers on the dogs for actually hunting the deer and just driving around the tracks to cut them off which is illegal according to the handbook (nearly every crew I've seen does this), whereas they're legal use is for finding dogs after the hunt that have run off. Just stuff like that.

I went with a crew one time and they were using vehicles and Gps to cut off the deer, one bloke shot a stag and held the radio receiver over it for a few minutes while it was moaning in pain and thought it was a right laugh. One bloke also laughingly told me how he keeps a big shifter down at the dog yards and clubs the heads in of any that aren't up to scratch. Left a bad taste in my mouth so I'd never be a part of it again but there are good crews out there that do the right thing.

a good mate of mine did it for 15 years and another for probably 20, both loved it but both are out of it now for aforementioned reasons. The older blokes mostly are the ones that did it the right way when the hunting was about the dogs and not just getting big annual tallies.

I'm not against it though by any means, serves a good purpose at managing the numbers and done right would be great fun I'm sure.

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