SECOND CHANCE SAMBAR

In 2024 it was time to get serious. Along with my mate Roger from the South East SA ADA Branch, we selected 10 days in September to hunt. In the past, I’d mostly done short 3 to 4 day hunts due to work commitments. But a longer window would give us a lot more chance to explore the area and pattern deer activity, with a full week to hunt plus travel days. Next came fitness; I was getting older and the hills certainly weren’t flattening out! I started by leaping right out of my comfort zone and joining a gym for the first time in my life. This gave me several months of working out three times per week, doing weights-based circuit training along with plenty of walking in between. We planned to hunt an area we’d walked into back in 2017 and had seen good deer numbers. It was remote, a long 4WD trip followed by a 16km walk/mountain bike ride into camp. Hopefully all this hard work would pay dividends!

The day finally arrived and the 10-hour drive over went without hitch. We met the rest of our group, Morgan and his Dad Howard, camped that night with the vehicle up top, then loaded up at dawn for the arduous trek in. My Moroka30 75L pack sure felt heavier than it should! We made camp in good time with plenty of sweat lost. In perfect sunshine we pitched our tents and made camp as comfortable as we could. Still feeling pretty good, Morgan, Rog and I decided to hunt along the main river valley until dark. We saw our first deer, a hind and calf, around 4pm, which was a great sign. Doing plenty of glassing, we sat and waited over a clearing until the sun began to fade. As it often does, the urge to ‘just look over one more hill’ was biting, so off we went. It was Morgan’s experienced eye that spotted the stag first, feeding on a riverbank almost a kilometre away down the valley. I could barely make out antlers in the fading light, but he looked pretty good!

With no time to waste, we made a beeline straight for him, navigating blackberry thickets and low swampy ground as we went. A strong side-wind masked our scent. One last tree offered some cover, but it would still be a long enough shot. A quick look through my binoculars ranged him at 182m. I levelled the .350, heart beating hard and breathing heavily. I couldn’t see his legs over the rise but could see his shoulder. My brain was telling me to stop, take my time and settle my breathing. But the sight picture seemed OK, so instinctively I squeezed off a shot. Almost instantly, regret set in. My sight picture felt high as the shot went off. No thud was heard, and the stag ran off as if uninjured.

Morgan and Rog made their way up to me, and their view of the shot mirrored mine. We walked over and soon found the stag’s running marks. We followed as he skirted the river’s edge. Fifty metres further on, there was a couple of spots of blood – I’d connected. We followed for another couple of hundred metres into incredibly thick cover but only found a few more rapidly diminishing specks of blood. We spread out and searched until it was too dark to continue. All of us agreed that it only seemed like a superficial wound, and that the stag was likely still going strong. It was a very long walk back to camp under headtorch to cap off a 26-km day. I was completely dejected, I lagged behind the other guys and really felt that I’d let them down badly after such a big effort.

That night I didn’t sleep a wink. I seriously hate wounding an animal and can only remember one other occasion that I’d actually lost one. I replayed the shot in my head a million times as I lay in my sleeping bag. I believe that not being able to see the bottom third of the animal, subconsciously pushed my shot higher than it needed to be. I was giving myself a thorough mental beating. It had taken 16 years for an opportunity at a mature stag, and I’d blown it. How long would it take for another opportunity that good to offer itself? Maybe never.

Sunrise brings a new day and with a week left to hunt, I was determined to maintain the effort required to give every chance of success. Roger and I hunted our way up a side valley and up into some high benches where we’d passed up an old handlebar stag on our previous trip. It was a promising morning with some fresh wallows active, but no deer were sighted. We made it back to camp in time for a hearty lunch to replenish some calories. It had been an enjoyable morning, but the previous evening’s events were grating me. I knew I’d forever regret it if I didn’t make the effort to go and have one more look for that stag, so after lunch I asked Rog if he’d mind coming to give me a hand, which he happily agreed.

Five kilometres from camp, we dropped down onto the river and picked up the marks from the previous evening. Again we followed them into a huge expanse of the most difficult terrain imaginable. Fallen trees, thick undergrowth, twisted blackberries and coprosma, and wet swampy ground all combined to make progress painfully slow. For the next few hours, we worked our way through this mire, spread out to search for sign. Eventually I had to admit defeat; this was something that I’d needed to do, and I now felt satisfied that we’d given it a fitting effort. Rog certainly didn’t need to put himself through that, but like good mates do, he was happy to help put my mind at ease.

An hour before dark, we decided to head back up to the main valley and slowly work our way back towards camp, glassing over any likely areas as we went. As we crested a steep rise, I stopped at the top and more for a breather than anything, lifted my binos and looked across the valley. There in my lenses was a stag thrashing a wattle, and he looked quite long too! I could hardly believe it – I hadn’t even scanned the bush, the Swaros just fell right on him; meant to be! As quickly as he’d appeared, he then melted back into the thick bush.

With nothing to lose and light fading, Rog and I punched down the hill in the direction we’d seen him, luckily the wind was favourable. After cutting off half a kilometre, we hunkered down in some cover, glassing to try and relocate him. I was determined to stay patient after last night’s fiasco. Nothing showed, so we started to tiptoe along the bush edge ahead. I remembered the old sambar hunting rule; walk a few steps, stop and glass. Repeat. In the thick cover to our right, a hind honked twice. We froze. Just up ahead a small game trail to our right went through some coprosma, so we snuck through and found a good-sized clearing opening out before us. As quickly as we could soak in our surrounds, we both simultaneously noticed antlers coming across the clearing towards us, so we slowly hit the deck.

On my knees, I raised my binos to my eyes and surveyed the scene. Full of the rut, the stag stomped his feet in stiff-legged fashion with his mane flared and head alert, as he slowly moved across the clearing, quartering left to right towards us. His antlers looked long and high above his head. Replacing my binos with my rifle, I found him in the scope, but didn’t have a clear sight picture just yet, and he was still getting closer. Halfway across the clearing was a patch of slightly raised ground, if the stag made it to that, I would get my chance. With my leading elbow resting on my knee, I turned the little Kahles scope up to 7 power and watched as, step-by-step, more of his chest came into view. As his legs crested the rise, my reticle found his shoulder, and I sent a 225gn Woodleigh on its way. At 140m, the stag appeared hard-hit, he hunched up and then immediately hit high gear into the thick scrub to our right. As quickly as he disappeared, he came bolting across the clearing again towards the river to our left, antlers laid along his back in full stride. I swung the crosshairs onto his neck and squeezed off another shot, but he never missed a beat and was quickly swallowed up by a wall of undergrowth.

Chambering another round and winding my scope right down to 2, I headed into the thick stuff after him, weaving through coprosma and blackberries. Up ahead I caught the slightest glimpse of antlers and a big brown backside, but there was no time for a shot as he moved again. Keeping on straight ahead, I made it to the river’s edge with no further sightings. I glassed the opposite face, it was extremely steep, so I thought he wouldn’t go up there if wounded. I scanned the river’s edge for blood, prints or marks where he’d descended the bank, and found nothing obvious. This is when panic started to creep back in, surely I hadn’t missed him? The shot had felt good and his reaction was promising, but I couldn’t live with myself if I’d messed up on another stag!

Time to apply some logic. I moved 20m down the river to my left, then went up and over the bank into the thick stuff again to continue searching. My luck was in, as soon as I cleared the first cover there was a big brown backside only 20m in front. I threw up the Ruger but he moved to the right into some thickets as I did. Sneaking forwards, I looked to my right and could see his shoulder through the thick stuff, he was hunched up and looking fairly sick so I sent a finisher home right through the vitals. He raced off again towards the river, but only made it 20m to where he fell beside a large fallen tree and kicked his last.

I scrambled up though thick leaf litter around the fallen tree, and then reality sank in;I’d done it! All the hard work and build-up to this moment had certainly paid off. I yelled out to Rog who was still out in the clearing. “Rog! I got him!”, “And he’s a bloody ripper!” Rog fought his way through the coprosma and eventually found his way to me. As the light rapidly faded we attempted a few trophy photos, but unfortunately with only a mobile phone between us, they were average in quality. I caped him out under headtorch, conscious of the load I had to carry out I cut the cape just long enough at the shoulder, and made sure it was fleshed cleanly.

Now came the fun part, we loaded up our gear, Rog carrying both our rifles as I hoisted the head and cape across my shoulders. Bashing our way through walls of cover and constantly being grabbed by blackberries, it only got worse as we found ourselves in a large swampy area of knee-deep water and mud. With total darkness and no moon, we got turned around a couple of times and had to resort to the GPS to give us a straight line towards the main track to camp. Eventually, utterly exhausted and soaking wet, we stumbled into camp around 10pm. Thankfully, Morgan and Howard had kept the fire ticking along for us, as we had a story to share! I’m certainly not a spiritual man, but I do believe things happen for a reason. And the way this hunt transpired, just proves that dedication and commitment will be rewarded. If I hadn’t have gone back to search for the original stag, I never would have found this one.

The next day we were treated to a beautiful clear sunny day, just perfect to get the face caping done on my trophy, turn the ears and lips, and get it packed in salt. An old handsaw and a lot of elbow grease finally had the skullcap trimmed to further reduce weight. His antlers later measured 27 ½ x 28 ¾ x 30 3/8” wide, for a Douglas score of 180 1/8 after overspread penalty.

Rog and I stayed in camp a further three days, enjoying perfect weather and a few more leisurely hunts, seeing a couple more deer. We decided to walk out a day ahead of schedule, as the forecast on my Garmin Inreach was for rain. It was a long, slow ascent back up to the tops and the vehicle, but as always, it’s made a little easier when there’s a trophy on your back!

“There in my lenses was a stag thrashing a wattle.”