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Originally posted by Pete E:
What makes taking a Sambar stag under fair chase conditions so difficult? I understand about the terrain and the habitat ect, but it must be something more than that.

Either you are lousy hunters (which I don't think so! ) or there must be something else...Are the stags particularly nocturnal? Are there numbers really low?

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Just curious, why the spotlighters find it so easy but but fair chase is so difficult..

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John H.

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NitroExpress.com - the net's double rifle forum

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Sambar stags are elusive, cunning and nocturnal, moving in the low light of dusk and throughout the night but by the time the sun is up they have retreated to their beds at the head of some remote gully or half to three-quarters of the way up a steep face from where they keep careful vigil over their domain. While bedded a stag never truly relaxes for more than twenty seconds before peering about alertly, testing and retesting the thermals and ceasing cud chewing to listen intently with large bat like ears which swivel constantly in an endless search for danger. Bionic hearing is complemented by a super-sensitive nose equipping sambar with an all but impenetrable predator detection system.

When disturbed, a stag rises from his bed and silently moves behind cover where he waits to identify the intruder. If not threatened directly he will allow it to pass, or he may sneak quietly away, but if spooked he will explode away at the speed of a quarter horse, accompanied by an eruption of snapping sticks and branches lasting just a few seconds before giving way to total silence. Then, as if by magic this large animal simply vanishes.

The difficulty in hunting sambar has resulted in them being revered wherever they have been hunted throughout the world. Legendary hunters such as Samuel Baker and Jim Corbett considered sambar to be one of the world's finest big game animals. In India during the British Raj, sambar were a favourite quarry of British colonial hunters and now a virtual litany of passages revering sambar exists in books by these hunter/authors of a bygone era.

Perhaps the following by Dunbar Brander best sums up the qualities for which sambar are revered wherever they are hunted. Brander, who worked as a Forest Officer in India for over twenty years, was regarded as one of the greatest authorities in all that pertains to jungle and shikar lore in central India. In his classic Wild Animals in Central India published in 1923 he wrote that the eyesight of sambar is only moderate, but to compensate for this they possess excellent hearing and smell, senses which are constantly used for their very survival as they are one of the chief prey of the tiger and the wild dog, as well as having been constantly hunted by man from time immemorial. Sambar possess, Brander said, faculties and instincts of self preservation to a degree not attained by any other deer in the plains of India and can instantly act in a variety of different ways in order to avoid danger or to deal with an awkward situation. And in spite of being a common animal, in order to secure a really good specimen, the hunter will generally encounter more difficulty than in the case of any other deer or antelope.

After a guided hunt for this highly prized inhabitant of Victoria's high country, international hunter/author Scott Haugen summed up sambar like this. 'Take the cunning traits of the whitetail deer, the elusiveness of Columbian blacktails and the caginess of high-country mulies, and combine them with the superior instincts of elk. Now roll them into one species. What do you get? The ultimate alpine forest-dwelling deer; the sambar of Australia.'

Veteran Victorian sambar hunters also extol the virtues of sambar and argue that most other species of deer and other big game are incomparable with sambar. Hence, it is hardly surprising that in the context of 'difficult-to-hunt' sambar are arguably a greater prize than Africa's most desirable and most difficult-to-obtain trophies such as Derby eland, bongo and mountain nyala. Perfect blending of colour and habitat further increases the difficulty in hunting sambar and sambar do not roar or make any other sound or behave in any other way to assist the hunter. Rather, they employ a diverse range of cunning anti-predator strategies designed to outwit and at times completely overcome predators, including man.