Chasing chital 

A chance encounter leads to a new challenge 

Brendan Jones 

Prologue 

Like many of our more successful hunts, this one was preceded with a less successful hunt. The prequel was a spur-of-the-moment Saturday evening undertaking, west of home (in Townsville), organised the morning of. After a long dry spell hunting-wise, which was dictated by a long, wet spell weather-wise, the goal was just to blow the cobwebs out, maintain a relationship with the property owners, give the dogs-in -training a run, and who knows, maybe even shoot a pig. The planets aligned, gear was hastily packed, and Paul and I found ourselves driving in the direction the sun would soon set. 

Paul and the author (right) pose with the last light deer, now in complete darkness. 

I will spare you further details of that hunt, apart from one 10-second window of time that was a paradigm shift in our hunting endeavours up to that point. As we drove along a track that terminated in a dam in the late afternoon, something chestnut brown, with white spots, and pointy things on its head, effortlessly glided across the laneway. We could hardly believe our eyes as it floated over the four-strand barbwire fence and evaporated into the lush post-wet season scrub. Chital deer! 

You see, chital deer weren’t known to be on this property. As such, we were woefully underprepared both logistically, with an un-scoped jungle carbine for bailed pigs and a 22LR for small game once it got dark, and mentally, with zero deer game plans. Getting access to chital deer-holding properties is a few orders of magnitude harder than ones that hold pigs. But in this case, the one we had been hunting for years, was now holding at least one deer.  

A pivot in preparation 

Needless to say, the week that proceeded that event unfolded very differently. Monday, we cleared next Saturday’s schedules. Tuesday saw access locked in with the owner. Wednesday had Crunchie and Zola (dogs) relegated (unbeknownst to them) to the bench, and Dave (a human) called up to the run-on side. Thursday (public holiday) saw Paul, who had been vacillating all wet season over what scope to buy for his new Tikka stainless CTR in .308, and myself, mount and sight-in an old VX-2 3-9x40mm. Friday was spent watching the clock at work while sending an obscenely large numbers of texts about gear, eskies, camo, tactics, times, etc. Saturday couldn’t come soon enough. 

But before we knew it, we had all rendezvoused, packed and were away, a week to the day later, albeit a few hours earlier. This time with more guns of the appropriate variety, enough ice to down a 1910s passenger liner, and the dogs howling from the yard in disgust. 

Discussion in the cabin was unsurprisingly chital-centric. All the possible scenarios and game plans were raised and then dissected at length, as the kilometres clicked by on the odometer. We finally settled on going straight to ‘Deer Dam’, shooting enough deer to fill the multiple empty (bar ice) eskies we had brought and then hunt pigs all arvo and into the night. If that fool-proof plan failed, we would cover as much of the place as we could to gather good intel for the night session (when most pigs come out in summer up here), returning to Deer Dam on dusk to fill all the eskies we hadn’t filled earlier. 

One of the larger swamps on the property. Pig sign had us hopeful of success on a planned return that night. 

Plan A failure 

A few hours later we stopped in at the station house for the obligatory check in. One of the sons told us it was “too wet and too green, you won’t get anything”. With that confidence-inspiring send-off, we headed straight to THE dam. Parking a few hundred meters back, where we had seen the deer, we assessed the wind and snuck in as close as we dared and glassed. Nothing. Plan A was a bust. The deer weren’t getting a relieving cool drink as we had hoped. We elected not to walk in to check for sign, as that would potentially scent the area up, and the intel of hoofprints around told it was only a week old. We backed out and saddled up in the BT-50 once more. 

Enacting Plan B, we ran as many water points as we could, looking for sign, deciding where to hit later that night and where to cut away. No deer prints were found, but we gleaned a shortlist of spots worth another look once it was dark and had cooled down from the 35 degrees it was currently. 

Based partly on experience, and partly luck, we looped back around the 50,000-acre property to Deer Dam with about half hour to sunset and another 20 minutes of twilight after that. When I saw Paul switch out his sweat-soaked shirt for camouflage, I realised we were getting serious. I had never seen him wear a camo top before – and never since. I complained jokingly that if I was ever to write this up there would be a lack of continuity in the photos; Paul just laughed. 

Plan B failing 

We rinsed and repeated our earlier approach, with an identical result. Plan B was looking shaky. Dave elected to remain as ‘overwatch’ (his ADF background coming though). Paul and I went to the right and got down into the dry, sandy creek that looped out and around and fed the dam. We followed it to the point we could see behind the dam wall, which was broadside from our previous vantage. Nothing. Hopes of deer were rapidly fading like the light. We waited maybe half an hour. Sunset had come and gone. I was getting worried now. I radioed Dave and advised we were making a move in behind the 100m long dirt wall. 

As we paralleled the wall on our left, there was nothing off in the surrounding scrub to our right or in front. We posted-up in a nice shrubbery halfway along with five minutes of light left. “What were we doing?” I was thinking. “We have gone deer crazy.” I have never been a sit-in-one-spot-and-wait kind of hunter. My bread and butter, especially at this time of day, on this property, is to cover as much ground in the ‘golden hour’ when pigs are starting to move. “This is not on brand. This is stupid. This is how the Americans hunt on YouTube sitting in one spot all day. This is…” My mental spiral into the depths of despair and self-loathing was cut short. My subconscious image-recognition algorithm flagged something 45° out to the front right. Binocular inspection revealed a quadruped a couple hundred meters away coming in. It wasn’t a cow, and it wasn’t a pig.  

Fortune in the failing light 

“Deer!” I hissed at Paul as loud as I dared. He silently chambered a 150gr soft point, and I quietly racked a round into the 39. Paul was struggling to locate the deer in the vegetation and failing light without binoculars – light which we could count in seconds now rather than minutes. I raised the bolt on Dave’s CZ I was carrying and laid it against a tree. If this was going to work, we needed to act fast. 

I pointed out some trees another 30m ahead and told Paul to get low and move. I’m not sure if it was the camo, or the lack of light, but he was the embodiment of the phrase ‘ginger ninja’. I glassed the deer. He had water on his mind and the wind was good. I radioed Dave for a five-second update and invoked radio silence. I caught up to Paul, who was yet to see the mostly obscured transiting deer. I guided him onto a rest against a tree and gave him my predicted target window about 100m out where I believed the stag would break cover and cross the lower part of wall as it tapered off. 

“When he comes out, you’re going to have to take him as he crests the wall. If he goes, over he’ll end up between us and Dave and no one will have a safe shot.” Paul understood before I was halfway through explaining. Paul crouched against the tree in position, aiming at nothing, as I observed. “Here he comes,” I said in what must have literally been the last 30 seconds of dying light that our eyes were racing to adjust to. The stag broke cover and confidently strode up onto the wall into Paul’s sight picture. BOOM! The new gun barked. The muzzle of the 20-inch barrel flared brightly in the dark, filling the air with the smell of cordite. Paul, having lost sight though recoil and muzzle flash asked, “Where is he?”. “He’s down, mate” I said, “he’s down”. 

Epilogue 

We all gathered around the downed deer right there on top of the wall for an excited retelling of perspectives while we took photos, harvested meat and filled eskies. The head was stashed out of dingoes’ reach so the meat ants could work in peace. It wasn’t long into our night hunting endeavours when one of the threatening storms struck. The lightning strikes and flying branches didn’t seem so bad from the driver’s seat, but those on the tray begged to differ. The BOM radar showed it wasn’t going to pass, so we pulled the pin and retreated eastwards for home. In between watching the lightshow during the drive, I mused, “I think that deer we saw last week was bigger than yours.” Dave chimed in, “I reckon I could make out more with the handheld thermal further out before the gun went off.” After a pause Paul asked, “What are you two doing next weekend…?” 

The trip the previous week was an adventure all of its own, but that story, including this cat shot by Paul, is a tale for another time.