Table of contents for Edition 69 in Australian Hunter

I act as caretaker on a large 2200 sq km cattle station when the manager is elsewhere. The station is rugged to the extreme, being on the western edge of the Great Dividing Range, about 300km west from Cairns in North Queensland. The work is not hard - feeding dogs, chooks and pigs with patrols to check on dams, bores and cattle. The patrols provide me with a chance to hunt for wild dogs and feral pigs. Generally, I take a mate along, but on the last two occasions he had to drop out due to family business. As it was too late to find someone else, I was alone on consecutive weekends. The dry season was well advanced with temperatures ranging from 36C to 41C, a time when you…

These days, many Aussie hunters use binoculars when out hunting. There are a massive array of options on offer, from the lower priced ones of questionable quality to the extremely expensive, super performance models of the top-end brands. A myriad of other suitable varieties also exist in between. I started hunting as a young bloke, way back in the 1960s, with open sights on my Anschutz .22 Hornet and quickly graduated to a Brno .22 Hornet with a 4x Pecar scope. Wow, how good was that crystal clear Pecar! I learned to stop often and scan likely spots ahead for game through the scope. Basically, I was using the scope as I would a pair of binoculars. The system worked, but it had obvious drawbacks - the scope being only…

The alarm ejected me out of bed at 5am and I made the hour’s drive from my home in Zuid (south) Holland to a hamlet in the flat farming polders (paddocks) of Noord (north) Holland, about 20 minutes outside the Dutch capital of Amsterdam. When I arrived, I was greeted by Frans, who I had met six years earlier during a wild boar and deer hunt in the Netherland’s eastern Veluwe region. Born and raised in Tasmania, I moved to The Hague a good number of years ago. After our first meeting, Frans invited me on a hunt in Noord Holland and we had been returning there annually since. Frans’ daughter, Jitske, was also joining us and had been going on hunting trips with her dad since she was six…

The latest release from Eagleye is the Light Mount for utes and quads by SmartRest. Once again, the clever people at Eagleye have an innovative product. According to the Eagleye website, this offering can also be mounted to ‘UTV and buggy vehicles, as well as boats and helicopters.’ The unit features a mounting system similar to the Hyperpod II in that a Weavertype rail is supplied, which bolts onto the bottom of your existing spotlight and then attached via a quick-release clamp to the swivel arm. This quick-release clamp allows you to easily remove the spotlight from the Light Mount if required. The mounting instructions state that the Weaver rail is designed for a Powa Beam light only, but if I turned the lead 90 degrees, the unit mounted to…

It is de rigueur to twice cook your ribs. This rib recipe is ideal for the camp fire in that the two different cooking phases occur in the same pot (in this case the ‘pot’ is a cast iron camp oven). Phase one is the sautéing of the dry rubbed ribs in the cast iron camp oven. Then the braising liquid is added and the ribs are lightly simmered for a few hours. The recipe is ideal for the baby back rib cuts as these are often meatier than the alternate cut of straight boned spare ribs. I’ve contemplated that as messy as rib eating is known to be, one of the less messy places is surely beside the camp fire. With grass to wipe your hands on, and a…

Rib tips are short, meaty sections of rib attached to the lower end of the spare ribs, between the bones and the sternum (breastbone). Unlike back ribs and/or spare ribs, the structure of the rib tip sheet is provided by dense costal cartilage bars (not bone). Rib tips are cut away from the spare ribs when preparing St. Louis-style ribs. Pork rib tips contain soft cartilage, which when cooked for more than an hour, offer absolutely melt-in-your mouth tender meat between the textural change of chewy bits of softened cartilage. The soft cartilage is a great source of collagen and glucosamine, which are said to be beneficial for both your skin and joints. Spooned straight from the bowl, I liken the taste of watercress soup as something akin to ‘green…

My first five-day expedition to Arnhem Land was many years ago and followed an auction hunt purchase at a Safari Club International (SCI) South Pacific Chapter convention in Sydney. The trophy target, an Asiatic water buffalo. My kick-off point was Maningrida on the Liverpool River that flows into the Arafura Sea. My guides Brett and Nick, from Bawinanga Safaris, introduced me to their base camp at Djinkarr on an escarpment overlooking the Tomkinson River. We were soon on our way down the Bulman Track to our fly camp at Yaminee creek, accompanied by indigenous Bawinanga Djelk Rangers Victor and Michael. An 86km four-hour drive included a Cadell River crossing using a vehicle winch, arriving in late afternoon. We sighted eight buffaloes on the trip down, including one good bull. Our…

The Leatherman Tool Group was founded by Tim Leatherman in 1983. Since then it has gone on to release dozens of diverse multi-tools in almost as many configurations. Different colour options, steels, refinements and evolutions of existing types helps keep Leatherman at the forefront of product innovation when it comes to tools for the home handyman, qualified tradesman, backyard shed tinkerer and yes, even the outdoorsman. The Leatherman Wingman model was released back in 2011 and quickly became one of the better sellers in the company’s line-up. Its success is simple to fathom. It’s not the biggest tool offered by this company, but it does contain more than enough implements for the average person to manage. Think of this model as having most of the things you need without going…

I could barely see two white specks on a rock platform way up in the hills. Grabbing my 8x30 binoculars, my suspicions were confirmed – feral goats. The Kimber 84M chambered in 6SLR would be fine on goats. By the time I reached the rock ledge, the pair had vanished. They had crossed into the neighbour’s property, so I came back down from the heights. That afternoon, I decided to stake out a dam until dark. A deer came and had a drink, but I had plenty of venison in my freezer. A fox approached within 100 paces of the dam but did a sudden u-turn and ran. The 90-grain Speer destroyed him. Popularity of the .243 Win in Australia far exceeds other commercial rounds in that bore diameter such…

As if someone had just drawn the curtains open, the first of the day’s rays began to pierce through the scrub along with the heat that I have come to expect from the mid-January summer sun. ‘You have to be a tough animal to survive this kind of climate,’ I thought to myself, as we stared intently for any sign of movement along the creek line to the east. We were looking for wild dogs from a hidden observation post in a clump of trees on a hill. Once again, I was hunting the ever-present and often elusive predators on my usual patch, accompanied by my brother and young nephew. Although the local council baiting program had been used, on this property the odd dog for whatever reason seems to…

After hunting in America with my family and managing to bag myself a whitetail buck, my guide over there, Wade, accepted my invitation to hunt over here. As part of the arrangement he would fly my whitetail antlers and tanned skin to Australia and in return I would take him out to hopefully shoot a few ferals. The arrival rolled around quicker than anticipated and I picked up the Americans from the airport. Wade had brought his girlfriend Kyla with him, stating: “If she doesn’t keep up or carry the bow, she may not be marriage material.” Big call… let’s see if it pays off for him. The LandCruiser was packed with gear, guns, people and everything else we needed for seven days hunting, so we headed off for the…

Sometimes you pick up a rifle and say to yourself “I love this.” That happened to me when I hefted a Sako 85 Finnlight .308W. It felt incredibly light and at 2.9kg it is an ideal walkabout hunting rifle. It’s made for hunters who foray high into the mountains or deep into forests and want to keep weight down. Even after fitting a scope, the rifle is compact and handy. I love Sako rifles and purchased my first one back in 1961, a Sako Vixen in .222 Remington. I have a Sako .223 Remington Magnum and a .22-250 that is in dire need of a new barrel. I had never owned a .308W calibre rifle, though have used dozens over the years and shot a lot of game with the…

The activities of photography and hunting are more symbiotic than many people imagine. The very nature of hunting engenders an awareness of all lifeforms as a necessary part of any successful tracking down of game. As a hunter, prerequisite knowledge of your quarry’s habits and preferred habitat such as food and shelter opens the door to discovering the facts about plants and vegetation any animal prefers. While stalking you cannot help but notice a myriad of small and beautiful natural wonders which often provide a distraction to the job at hand. In the bush while hunting, these distractions can become the highlight of the day, especially as you should not expect success every outing. There’s beauty in the fantastic fungal displays, at times rich in colour and in terraced colonies…

Every now and then, a manufacturer gets it right. Really right. Winchester did it with the legendary Model 70, Leupold did it with the original VX series of scopes and Ruger did it by reviving the single shot for the 20th Century. These manufacturers saw a niche market for a solid performing, affordable and functional model which would have mass appeal. They were right. These offerings in various guises have remained consistently popular since their introduction. Buck knives likewise got it very right when they introduced the Model 119. This was a simple fixed blade brought forth from wartime necessity which eventually achieved legendary status throughout the hunting community. Let us examine the reasons for its introduction, why it constitutes such a great knife and conclude with what it’s good…

It started with a roar There are certain tones you can gather from a stag’s roar. After 10 years of hunting them I’m becoming pretty spot-on with my assessments. This roar was loud, deep and serious. Not your typical run-of-the-mill sound. He was old, aggressive and wanted every other stag to know it. He stood in plain sight on top of his knoll. It was tough to close the gap on this heavy 4x3 as he was on the adjacent tree line, with hinds all around him feeding on the flats not 50 yards away. Me and my hunting buddies Joe and Clark were in a good position with the wind just right. This beast put on a show for more than 20 minutes. He ran back and forth countless…

Official Australian Hunter Magazine Men’s Columbia PFG Bahama II long sleeve shirt Our new and exclusive shirts, proudly emblazoned with ‘Australian Hunter Magazine’ on the front and ‘Always the Hunter’ on the sleeve, are designed with the total purpose of hunting and fishing. The shirts are made by Columbia Sportswear Company in the US, who are industry leaders in outdoor apparel after being owned and operated by the same family of passionate hunters and fishers for more than 70 years. Decades of hands-on experience has culminated in this lightweight and quick-drying shirt that’s built tough to keep you enjoying the outdoors for longer. Their cutting-edge Omni-Shade UPF 30 technology has earned the Skin Cancer Foundation seal of recommendation. The tight weave construction with UV absorbent yarns and ceramic reflectors block…

My approach to game meat ribs is focused on the size of the animal that you have taken (ideally a head-shot beast). Pigs, goats and small deer can all be processed into similar sized cuts. Typically, ribs are butchered from either goats and lamb/sheep as a rack (rack of lamb). From a pig/pork, you will normally obtain baby back ribs (loin ribs) and spare ribs. The spare ribs can be further sectioned into St. Louis-style ribs (mid ribs) and rib tips. Being a home butcher, you can borrow a little bit from each example and produce whichever cut of meat that you like. Spare ribs For the home butcher, spare ribs (side ribs) are cut from a full sheet of ribs so that they are a flat sheet of connected…

The idea behind this recipe is that its flavours are completely different to the heavy smoke and barbecue sauce-based taste of the previous recipe. This dish is the combination of bright citrus zing and the punch of fresh herbs. The basil and citrus offset superbly the gaminess of wild boar ribs. It also may be of interest to readers that after a recent serious back injury, I now use two small camp ovens rather than one large one. A 4.5qt Supex brand camp oven weighs around 5kg, whereas my favourite 10qt oval camp oven of the same brand weighs close to 15kg. As an additional benefit, I also find these small camp ovens to be easier to pack and store when travelling and/or car camping. To set the recipe rolling,…