Started off year with a exploratory hunt into new country and harvested a cull stag.


Followed up with a meat animal for my youngest son Liam


Had the pleasure of taking out great mate for his best Sambar stag


Then finally it came together for another great mate Steve on his 1st Sambar stag at his 4th attempt.


Took out my oldest son Nick for his first Sambar Stag


Then in between overseas hunts and guiding I squeezed in a 5 day backpack trip with my middle son Josh, with him taking his biggest Sambar stag to date.


There is still 2 months of 2017 to go, I'll be heading up the mountains again trying to find Godzilla's love child.

Very nice. I'd like to try that someday.

What a year Pete.
Thanks for helping me to make my dreams come true.
What's next??

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Wow, one of my dreams!

Thanks for showing us what it's like down there.

George

I just came back from a drive around of the south island and could find little information on hunting. What does a hunt like this cost you. though I presume if a native, not as much as one of us. looks like some pretty thick stuff there, yet someone told me the N Island not as rough looking at the south one. thanks for the pictures and any info you can provide. MIGHT be willing to come up with the airfare and 12 hour or longer flight to come there for the chance to hunt game like that (though we have them here now too).

Tysue,

Sambar exist in New Zealand North Island and Australia primarily in Southern New South Wales and Victoria (but there are lots of pockets of Sambar outside this range).

You can also hunt sambar in Texas and California.

Sambar in New Zealand will be about $8000ish and are the biggest in antler. There are a very limited number available.

California's sambar were introduced by newspaper tycoon Randolph Hearst, and are only available on private properties in California free range. These hunts are over $13,000.

Texas sambar are available in a variety of locations in Texas google is your friend ($5000-10,000).

Australian sambar are available on public land, private land, and in game parks. Anyone can hunt Victoria on their own with a bow, by paying for a Victoria hunting license.

The magazine series and book series "Secrets of Sambar" will give you a good idea of where to look.

NSW requires hunters training to get a NSW hunting license, not probably ideal for a non-resident. But NSW has a lot of public land to hunt.

There are sambar in game ranches in Queensland, the Northern Territory and South Australia. Price varies considerably from $3500-10,000.

I have only hunted sambar in NSW and Victoria, these were all free range and I didn't kill one. I could have shot a couple of them in the headlights as we pulled into camp, but I didn't figure that was sporting. I had an opportunity to shoot a hind one morning and didn't. I think we hunted down there about 5 times. Our team killed one on every trip.

When Nepal was open, sambar was on the list. Not sure of status now

Pir Danish may know about Pakistan

Very impressive.

I presume you are hunting different areas or a very large area.

It would be I would have thought Hard to sustain harvesting so many stags in one season.

Geez Pete,liam is the spittin` image of you,well when you were younger lol.

Great!
I love those stags! Wonderful animals!

Wyoming: Pretty much knew what you said. Indeed , had an invite to hunt Sambar in Victoria, from a friend who's e-mail was Smmbar. But he had a heart attack a few years back and died, so not available. I thought a lot of the hunting was on the south island, so looks like I was wrong there. Thanks for the info though, as will help others reading it.

Tysue,

You could hunt there on your own with archery tackle. Easy day!