28 August 2012, 12:22
BenKKWeekend away for some pigs and a buffalo...
I got back from the bush Sunday evening, after a fantastic weekend in magnificent country. Four pigs and a little bull fell to the Merky .500NE, and one pig fell to Dave's bow. Along the way we enjoyed some beautiful (and some scary) native wildlife, and endured the usual headaches, nausea, thirst, hunger, dust, sweat and wearily-trudged thoughts of "Why the hell am I out here doing this when I could be under the fan with a cold drink back home?" Well, as always, it's the adventure and the beauty of wilderness and wild creatures - Robert Service "Spell of the Yukon" stuff (Google the poem) applied to the Never-Never in my thinking.
Anyway, the Woodleigh 570 grain softs did the trick. The Merky .500NE (which I've had for a year now) and I really came together this weekend for some magic instinctive shooting at game on the run, something akin to shotgunning, I imagine. I've done a bit of missing these running pigs in the past, but not this weekend: Every shot hit, and only one animal (a sow) was stationary for the first one. It's starting to come together for me, as I got my first pair of pigs with a neat right and left, running at a 45 degree angle away from me at about fifty and sixty yards. In the past, I've missed with my left on bombshelling pigs. Another boar was clobbered on a similar angle away from me at about seventy yards. The buffalo hunt was incredibly exciting, being up-close for quite some time before popping him down as he finally turned to run with a quick right-and-left. Dave's bowhunt was also very exciting and hard-won, closing to just seven yards from a sleeping sow. The three-bladed broadhead from his Mathews compound was devastating.
