During the first of August, my buddy Wayne and I enjoyed a cow buffalo cull with Matt Graham's Hunt Australia. It was conducted in Hunt Australia's Gan Gan concession in Arnhemland, about 3 hrs. drive south west of Gove. It is a very large concession. I have been told that it is over 500,000 acres.

It took us 2.5 days to get to camp from Honolulu, having to overnight in Sydney and again in Nhulunbuy.

Our first day of hunting was extremely eventful. Wayne and I both limited out on our allocated 10 cow buff each. The action was intense. Pete Harding our guide has an intimate knowledge of the property and knew exactly where to find the buff. Matt Graham, in hindsight, advises that it may have had a lot to do with the full moon that brought the concentration of buffalo into the area. My hunting experience leads me to believe the contrary as animals will feed nocturnally during the full moon and movement is substantially reduced during the days. Perhaps things are reversed "down under" in the southern hemisphere.

Officially, our hunt was over the first day. We then decided to dedicate the balance of our hunt looking for a nice trophy bull for Wayne. I was not interested in another trophy bull as I had taken one with Matt Graham in 2007. The majority of the 2nd day was uneventful. In late afternoon, Pete Harding spotted a bull peering over the sides of a recessed creek bed.

Pete and Wayne started the stalk. The bull moved away into the thick brush. In a few minutes the bull was down with one shot. Wayne was using his Bill Wiseman customized canon, a 460 Weatherby mag.

[URL=http://huntaust.com.au/images2009/DSC00183%20(Small).JPG]Wayne's bull

[URL=http://huntaust.com.au/images2009/DSC00167%20(Small).JPG]Geoff's cow

Wayne's bull scored green at 105 3/4 SCI inches with 18" & 19" bases. Our hunt was really concluded at the end of the second day. That was a real problem. Other than barramundi fishing, what were we going to do for the next three days? Wayne is not a fisherman, and I'm a poor one. Matt called by radio telephone and we were able to discuss activities for the next few days. Net result was that we would continue hunting for cows but had to pay additional fees. That we did but more sparingly.

Both Wayne and I were happy to be able to practice and exercise our rifles. I was using an old Browning 375 H&H. I was able to get 14 consecutive one shot kills using old Barnes X bullets. I quit due to budgetary limitations. I was sceptical when Matt advised to use the Barnes as I had marginal results with Barnes bullets in smaller calibers on smaller game. However, "always listen to your PH". I'm glad I did. Recovered bullets all had the perfect 4 petal expansion as you often see advertised.

All in all, everything was positive during the hunt, good weather, very good guide, good facilites and food, abundant game, and good success.

Geoff

Hi Geoff

thanks for posting the report mate!

I must confess - I DONT know how the moon effects that area but it does seem to have some effect, as the the animals cycle around the concession it seems. They can be easy to find some weeks and then really difficult the next.

There's no predicting it really though at the moment but you know that you will find them there somewhere.

As for the Barnes X - did you get any complete pass-throughs - just curious? The size of the animal and the strength of the hide certainly pulls them up hey?

Well done mate and thanks again! nice cow you got there...

Cheers
Matt

maybe someone like Bakes can fix your image links up? they should be...





PS. dont know why these links arent working?? if you paste them into browser they work??

Re-reading your post Geoff it actually does make sense about the full moon and the feeding. Most of those hunting tracks are close to sandy bedding areas and if the nocturnal activity is increased then the cow herds might have been spending more daylight hours in those rest areas??

Still just a guess though - "you find them where you find them"!

Matt,
Yes, I did get only one pass thru on a smaller cow. Pete saw a cloud of dust behind the cow. The Barnes bullet hit a grey flat faced termite mound, made a big hole in it but did not penetrate. Pete found the bullet on the ground about 10 feet from where it exited from the mound. I have a pic of the cow, mound, and me holding the bullet.

Geoff

You may have to upload them into a image hosting site Matt/Geoff

Yup - you need an intermediate host like Photobucket or Imageshack.

Be cool to see the pics - buffalo hunting has been topical here lately I see......

Hunting back home in Vic/South Gippy I always found that the full moon had an adverse affect on hunting, especially deer, must be something in it.

quote:

Originally posted by choppa:
Hunting back home in Vic/South Gippy I always found that the full moon had an adverse affect on hunting, especially deer, must be something in it.

Yeah - sure does with other game. It does with the pigs where we hunt - so we switch to moonlight hunting.

Full moon not good for spot-lighting varmits either...

Tomorrow, I will read the instructions on posting pics and try. I'm a real klutz at that stuff but will give it a go.

Geoff

http://huntaust.com.au/images2009/DSC00183.jpg

http://huntaust.com.au/images2009/DSC00167.jpg

Hey Geoff

Got the image locations changed - so the display on here - thanks to MadMick!

Cheers
Matt

Question for you Matt. Why cull hunts for cows? I would think they would be your breeding stock? Do the land owners tell you to cull numbers or are they the old barren cows?

Not trying to have a dig at you mate. Just interested in knowing how you go about managing the herd.

Hi Bakes

No problem. We think we have around 6000 buffalo in our area plus itinerant bulls. The local govt tell us we have closer to 12,000 - by aerial survey. I think that figure was exaggerated to suit 'their' purposes (herd reduction) but that being said there should be some herd management in this area.

My drive is to get a return for these buffalo cows - better than the alternative than to see them smacked out of a helicopter for no financial benefit to anybody. I am relying on guys like Geoff to show the land owners and supposed managers that these buffalo have worth and should be managed accordingly.

Saving breeding animals means nothing if they are going to be exterminated in a year or two time!!

Further with that Bakes... shooting cows is the only real way to manage numbers in this kind of scenario. Cows create more numbers, bulls do not. Shooting bulls has almost nil effect on future herd numbers (except for what you are actually shooting).

Aside from that...We have been managing the the bulls from a trophy perspective for the last four years... shooting the cull bulls to allow more trophy bulls into the area. This has worked pretty well to as we used to have heaps of aged non-trophy bulls in the area but now it can be quite hard to find them at times.

These non-trophy bulls still have a value to hunters but not near as much as the trophies.

Cool thanks Matt

Thanks guys,
Appreciate the help in getting the pics posted. I will still give it a go and try on my own. If successful, I'll post a couple more.

Geoff

Here's an attempt to post a couple of pics.


http://s981.photobucket.com/al...44/Gan%20Gan%202009/

Sorry,
Only to Photobucket link got posted. Anyway, one's a pic of a dead cow in the back with a hole thru a termite mound and me with the Barnes X that was found on the ground about 10 ft. away.

The other is of a bunch of cows in the sticks.

Geoff

Geoff, have a read of the posting photo's topic at the top of the page. That will give you all the info you need to post pics.

This is from MadMick and is why you had trouble posting photo's the first time

quote:

Re the images Matt and Geoff tried to post, the reason they didn't show is that the web server you guys are on does not know how to interpret spaces in the file name which show up as "20%" and hence wont display the images.

Hope that helps mate.

Thanks Bakes,
I tried several times but could not access your link. Must be my server. The local hawaiiantelcom server is probably the worst of the lot. Will consider a change of provider.

Geoff

quote:

Originally posted by geoff:
Thanks Bakes,
I tried several times but could not access your link. Must be my server. The local hawaiiantelcom server is probably the worst of the lot. Will consider a change of provider.

Geoff

Hi Geoff,

No need to change providers mate, the link to the image posting tutorial is was dead (fixed now).

When you upload your photos to Photobucket and the like, don't leave spaces in the file name or folder names as you have done above as that's what's causing the issues here.

Name the images and folders with an underscore instead, eg, "gan_gan" and "geoff_bull" and it will be fine.

To post an image after you have uploaded it to the image host of your choice, click on the "Post Image" button in the composition window as shown below;



Then paste the link to your image in the space provided and click ok, then your image will show up as you want .



Hope this helps.

Thanks Mick. I didn't know the link was dead. I shall fix it today (I hope )

quote:

Originally posted by Matt Graham:
Further with that Bakes... shooting cows is the only real way to manage numbers in this kind of scenario. Cows create more numbers, bulls do not. Shooting bulls has almost nil effect on future herd numbers (except for what you are actually shooting).

Matt, forgive the slight diversion from the original topic re buff, but if the same principles apply to 'managed game' in regard to say, deer hunting, you've just opened my eyes to a whole 'nuther way of explaining things to people...

Are the two situations roughly parallel?

Thanks Mad Mick,
Appreciate you help in getting the pic posted. Will follow your instructions and maybe I'll be able to pull it off.

Geoff

Geoff, the picture posting link should now work as well mate.

Thanks Bakes,

Geoff

quote:

Originally posted by rugeruser:

quote:

Originally posted by Matt Graham:
Further with that Bakes... shooting cows is the only real way to manage numbers in this kind of scenario. Cows create more numbers, bulls do not. Shooting bulls has almost nil effect on future herd numbers (except for what you are actually shooting).

Matt, forgive the slight diversion from the original topic re buff, but if the same principles apply to 'managed game' in regard to say, deer hunting, you've just opened my eyes to a whole 'nuther way of explaining things to people...

Are the two situations roughly parallel?

Yes mate - it does. Ill give you an example. Some places in the USA, everyone wants to get a buck and not shoot does so the numbers might keep increasing. To counteract some places will force people to shoot does (sometimes lots of them).

Go getem!!

quote:

Originally posted by Matt Graham:

quote:

Originally posted by rugeruser:

quote:

Originally posted by Matt Graham:
Further with that Bakes... shooting cows is the only real way to manage numbers in this kind of scenario. Cows create more numbers, bulls do not. Shooting bulls has almost nil effect on future herd numbers (except for what you are actually shooting).

Matt, forgive the slight diversion from the original topic re buff, but if the same principles apply to 'managed game' in regard to say, deer hunting, you've just opened my eyes to a whole 'nuther way of explaining things to people...

Are the two situations roughly parallel?

Yes mate - it does. Ill give you an example. Some places in the USA, everyone wants to get a buck and not shoot does so the numbers might keep increasing. To counteract some places will force people to shoot does (sometimes lots of them).

Go getem!!

Thanks Matt, it made intuitive sense to me (bucks/males can sire any number of offspring, but it takes does/females to actually bear them)... just wanted to make sure I had my facts right.

Ta muchly.

Great report and great photos! I too had a fine time hunting with Hunt Australia and guide Peter in Gan Gan several years ago and look forward to going back! Likewise I had a fantastic experence with the Barnes bullets on these bohemuth bovines!

The first 375 x entered the front shoulder quartering on, the old bull flipped around and hauled towards a swamp so a 2nd one was sent at the presenting hind quartering away. It lloked like a train wreck as the galloping beast slid on its chin across the parched pan.

Both bullets crossed thru the heart and lungs and ended in the opposite quarters!

Best Regards

Mike O

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