After the long but suc­cess­ful Hog deer hunt in April, I needed a break for a lit­tle while but as the days turned into weeks I started to get the bug again, time to get into the high coun­try and chase the truly tough stuff, south Pacific’s tough­est game ani­mal the Samba deer. Matt and I reg­u­larly went up to hunt Sam­bar and a trip was soon arranged with a friend john, matt, Elyas and me. May is a good time to hunt Sam­bar, too cool for snakes but not too cold to have to get rugged up, or so I thought.

After once again pack­ing every­thing that is required as well as what maybe required in any sit­u­a­tion we set off for a hunt in Victoria’s alpine high coun­try. We arrived up there very late at night and found matt and john had hit the hay early after hunt­ing that day. So I quickly dumped all the gear out of the car set up the swag and hit the hay as well. In the morn­ing a quick stoke of the fire, a hot brew and then the longest part of all; decid­ing where we were all going to hunt. After dress­ing myself up in full cam­ou­flage and then rag­ging Elyas up in some warm clothes, we set out on a brisk walk to the hunt­ing area.

We soon sep­a­rated, 1km off set matt and 1km the other way went john. I decided to stay in the mid­dle; it looked flat­ter and safer in case of emer­gency. We agreed on a call in on the UHF’s at 12pm and then every hour on the hour from then on, if a shot was made turn the UHF on and wait for the shooter to call in. Even at such a young age Elyas was fas­ci­nated by every­thing, from show­ing him deer poo, he too wanted to smell it, to small pur­ple flow­ers which started a great tra­di­tion of bring­ing home his mother some of the local flora (stick and leaves) or geol­ogy (river rocks). The back­pack seemed to have gained a lit­tle weight (kids grow so fast) since the hog deer hunt either that or the coun­try was much steep, prob­a­bly a com­bi­na­tion of both!

After an hour fresh sign was found, tracks and pel­lets nice and slimy green. I fol­lowed the tracks until it was 12pm, time to make the first call in. Turn­ing the UHF on I waited and within sec­onds both matt and john checked in and gave approx posi­tions on the map, then a flash of brown and orange caught my eye…….deer. I stopped talk­ing and watched a large stag on a fast trot get 80m away and stop. I tried to get a bead on the stag with the 300wsm but when he did stop to glance back he cov­ered his vitals with a large snow gum. He had in my mind mas­sive antlers, one was cov­ered by another tree but when he con­tin­ued on I saw both of them, long and curved. Pick­ing the UHF up I told the other what had just happened.

The stag had prob­a­bly been wan­der­ing to find a secure spot to bed, and was dis­turbed by john, decid­ing that he go over the hill he had cut across my track and come from behind then been star­tled by my scent, and moved quickly to my left behind me, if only I had been slower. I don’t know how much slower I could have gone but I was dis­ap­pointed that the ani­mal had escaped espe­cially hav­ing come from behind, I did con­sider myself lucky though to see a Sam­bar within 1 ½ hours of hunting.

That was the only excite­ment Elyas and I had until the 3pm call in. Rest­ing the pack with El in on a large rock I loos­ened the straps giv­ing myself the abil­ity to glass the val­ley in front. We all checked in on the UHF’s and then I saw another orange flash……..could it be. Yes another Sam­bar, mak­ing sure the wind was in my favor I tight­ened all the straps, dou­ble checked that noth­ing could come loose and placed a round in the cam­ber. All I had to do was cover 50m to give myself a clear shot from a large euca­lyp­tus tree, oth­er­wise I would be tak­ing the risk of the bul­let deflect­ing off the tea tree and scat­tered ferns.

With no word of a lie it took me 50 min­utes to cover that 50m, the Sam­bar now iden­ti­fied as a hind reg­u­larly checked the vicin­ity. I did every­thing right, show­ing El the deer he seemed excited too. I placed one foot at a time in between lying twigs and leaves, shuf­fling my feet so as not to make any crunch­ing sounds. My shoul­ders aching from the pack I wanted to hurry up and get to the tree, but know­ing Sam­bar any sud­den move­ment and she would have bolted with­out hes­i­ta­tion. Words sim­ply can­not describe time but even­tu­ally I made it to the gum tree. I rest­ing my arm on the tree I placed my rifle on top in a shoot­ing posi­tion, sig­nal­ing El to block his ears and to stay steady I read­ied for the shot.

I placed the crosshairs on the deer stand­ing 80m away I looked at tak­ing a chest shot, and then real­ized that I had the oppor­tu­nity to take a high shoul­der and cleanly dis­patch a deer with the min­i­mum of fuss. When the hind next looked up I imag­ined the spine and shot high on the shoul­der. The roar of the 300wsm echoed through the val­leys, and well before the echoes had stopped the hind had dropped, the fail­safe had sheared through the top of both the shoul­ders but most impor­tantly shat­tered the spine. I was rapt, turn­ing my UHF on I called the guys, they had heard the shot. I told them what had hap­pened, and they jok­ingly replied “you’ll be right you can carry it out on your own”. I gave them my GPS co’ ordi­nates and cel­e­brated with Elyas. I propped the cam­era on a near log and snapped away with a few pho­tos, it was at this time I noticed he was decid­edly quiet. I took him out of the pack and sat him next to the deer so he could soak it all in. he pat­ted the deer showed me her ears and eyes. I took some pho­tos to cap­ture the moment we had just accom­plished a great feat, we had taken a Sam­bar together; we had man­aged to hunt in fair chase a wild Sam­bar together he at the ten­der age of only 2 1/2, I then started the hard work of butchering.

Then El started to cry, unsure as to why I checked him over. No dirty nappy his hands seemed fine, it wasn’t until I checked his feet I notice they were frozen! I made an emer­gency fire and took his leather boots off, warm­ing his feet near the fire. I had been walk­ing and had not noticed the drop in tem­per­a­ture as I had been mov­ing and focused on the deer. I noti­fied the boys and con­tin­ued both butcher­ing and keep­ing my son near the fire. By the time the boys had arrived I had the deer in pieces but still cry­ing child. Quickly pack­ing El back in the pack we all took a piece of deer and head off to camp it was about a kilo­me­ter away. John was quickly out of sight, Matt how­ever stuck by and helped steady me through the creek cross­ings and uneven marsh grasses.

With El still cry­ing I was start­ing to panic, we stepped up the pace as fast as my aching body could go; I dropped my front half of the deer in a fork of a tree and started to run back to camp. When I arrived at camp John had the fire going and I quickly warmed El up by it, also giv­ing him some med­ica­tion for a lump on the head he had received whilst I was run­ning back to camp. It wasn’t long before El warmed up and actu­ally vol­un­teered to go to bed! Whilst relax­ing after he had gone to sleep I revealed in my achieve­ment, I thought I may have a slight chance to do a grand slam of all six deer species with El, but it was prob­a­bly a dream?

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