The best stalk I have ever seen
By JP Norris
After we returned from Africa, Trevor was having another check-up for the cancer he is fighting and received some devastating news. His original cancer hadn’t grown but new tumours were now evident and more aggressive than before. This meant he was to be treated by much more debilitating chemo to try to combat the advance of this insidious disease. When he rang with the news, I asked him if there was anything I could do. He asked if I could find somewhere he could hunt a deer while he was still able too. I do occasionally get deer on my place but cannot guarantee them due to the poisonous plants on the land so I started to ring around the outfitters that I know to see if we could get a hunt on short notice.
While most places were booked out some of the operators on hearing why we wanted it on short notice made space, but as Trevor must be on a chemo pump for a week and then have a week off, the dates just didn’t work. I rang Chancy of Real Chance Hunting & Safaris and when he found out what I was trying to do he said, “Mate, I will make it work” and so we were booked. We made our way to Chancy’s meeting area and he met us as arranged so we could follow him into camp.
I couldn’t believe it; we were camped on the bank of a huge river close to the ocean; in fact, we could fish for barramundi and crabs from camp. There was solar power and even air-conditioning in one of the rooms. It was a far cry from my usual camps, and we wanted for nothing. As is normal for me, it started to rain but the forecast said it would continue all day and night but be clear the next day.
Chancy took us for a look around and set us up in a blind so we could hopefully ambush a stag as it fed out from cover towards evening. Although we saw heaps of deer, we didn’t see a mature stag, so we retired for the night very happy hunters, well one hunter, as I was just baggage, due to having recently had surgery to re-attach some tendons in my right shoulder.
The next morning, we went to an area where we would be able to ambush deer when they returned from the floodplain to the heavy scrub cover for the day to sleep and chew their cud. The area has been badly affected by floods and because of being covered in flood silt, a lot of the grasses have been killed because there wasn’t sufficient rain after the floods to wash the silt off the struggling grass buds. As well as this there are thick patches of lantana and bellyache bush in amongst the timbered country and it’s there that the deer go to hold up during the heat of the day and for safety, as it’s very difficult to stalk quietly in the fallen leaf litter and sticks. Again, a mature stag didn’t appear although we saw upwards of 50 deer for the couple of hours we spent sitting in our blind.
The wind in the morning was very changeable and Chancy knew of a stag that was frequenting the floodplain area chasing hot hinds. He said that the afternoon was when we wanted to go to try for him, as the wind would be coming from the sea and much more stable. We went fishing for the rest of the morning and although no monsters were caught, Trevor managed to catch a few fish.
After lunch, Chancy drove us to the floodplain and we stalked into a blind he had set up opposite the area he expected the deer to come from. There were about 60 deer already eating the short pick around the waterhole when we got there but again no stags. We stalked in carefully using the few trees and whatever cover we could until we were about 400 meters from the deer across the water. Then another group of about 20 deer came out of the bush and started to feed down towards the water a bit further to the east from us. I ranged them through my Swarovski binoculars at just over 700 metres, and we hoped that they would feed towards us because there was a mature stag with this group. Again, Mr Murphy stuck his nose in it, and they went the other way, slowly feeding away from us. This was not the group of deer that Chancy was expecting and we had to make a choice. We could sit where we were and hope the deer Chancy knew of showed up or we could break away and try for the stag we could see. It was only about 2pm so we had plenty of time and Trevor decided to try for the stag we could see, reasoning if we blew it, we could sit the rest of the afternoon waiting on the other stags.
To get to the stag was not going to be easy, as there was virtually no cover apart for a few mature trees well back from the water hole. We carefully stalked back away from our position, freezing and hunching over every time a hind lifted her head and looked our way; we back tracked directly away from the deer then, when we were far enough away, we walked along a fence line keeping very close to each other so we would appear as a large animal rather than three individual hunters if a deer did notice us at that range. Eventually we got to around 600 meters from the deer and after glassing them again, found that the stag had bedded on the short pick and was sleeping, leaving the hinds to keep watch for him. We hunched over and together, grouped up almost sniffing each other’s bums, we slowly made our way from tree to tree in a circuitous route, gaining precious meters as we went.
A direct approach was not possible as it was completely devoid of any cover at all. When there were only two more groups of trees between us and the deer, I decided to stop as there was virtually no cover at all from here to the deer and more deer were coming out by the minute, including on our side of the water, so there was no point exposing any more hunters to the ever-vigilant deer than was necessary. I leaned against a large tree and tried to film the hunt, even though I was still well over 450 meters away from the deer.
Trevor and Chancy started to crawl from the next trees towards the planned shooting spot. This was effectively the last cover before the deer and was still over 200 meters from the target. Trevor is ex south African special forces but has, like me, had both his knees replaced, so crawling is not a pleasant experience. They were very slowly making a meter at a time towards the target trees but had to constantly freeze when a hind looked toward them. At one point a young hind walked no more than 20 meters from them and luckily didn’t notice the two big ‘roos frozen stiff in the middle of the plain. Trevor’s knees were agony, so they tried to leopard crawl, but he still needed to use his knees in this mode as well, so he tried crawling on his side in a type of side stroke, again freezing frequently as a hind’s head snapped up on full alert. Eventually they resorted to bum crawling and made it to the cover they were aiming at by using the bum shuffle that we had used so successfully in Africa.
I tried to take photos but had difficulty holding my Nikon Coolpix P600 camera at full 60X zoom. As a result, some of the photos are a bit grainy but were the best I could do at the time without a tripod and trying not to move.
Eventually the stag woke up but just continued to lay there for what seemed like forever and I had switched to video so I could record the shot. Trying to watch the viewfinder and stay on the deer was proving to be increasingly difficult and I started to panic when the stag stood up and I didn’t have him in frame. The image was flashing all over the place as I tried to get the deer in frame. The stag started to feed and as he turned completely broadside, Trevor sent a well-aimed 150 grain bullet out of his Remington 700 in .308 Winchester across the 200-metre gap. The resulting thump was the reward for such an epic stalk and Trevor had his stag. I jumped at the report and so stuffed up what should have been good footage; however, Trevor and Chancy were not too concerned about it, as they had the stag on the ground. We walked around the swamp to the stag and after taking many photos Chancy went to get his vehicle and drive around the other way to access the deer and take him back to camp for processing.
We were able to take a meat hind as part of the herd management that Chancy practices on his area so the next morning before daylight we went to another hide in order for the deer to relax again, after Chancy dropped us of, and we waited for hunting light. When the light improved enough for us to see into the scrub, we slowly walked into the tall timber and began sneaking around through the maze of tracks between the clumps of lantana and belly ache bush beneath the tall trees. The light didn’t penetrate here very well, and it was like hunting in a twilight zone, but it was where the deer were, and we spooked several as we entered the zone.
I had taken my wind cheater out of my bum belt and tested the very light breeze, as we slowly made our way into the maze. The white smoke swirled and slowly headed east, the direction we were heading, so I tapped Trevor on the shoulder and indicated that we should head south, but he still wanted to go east. I, someone had come along, it would have been a hilarious sight as we argued silently using hand signals about which way to go. In Trevor’s defence, he hadn’t seen me check the wind so he just thought I wanted to run the show; nonetheless, we took a few steps in the southern direction and spooked another deer that I couldn’t see in front of Trevor. The deer wasn’t overly alarmed and just moved off without giving an alarm bark. When I looked to our right, I saw two deer feeding in the lantana about 30 meters away. I grabbed Trevor and pointed out the deer, but the lantana was higher than the deer and as we were after a spiker or a hind, I couldn’t see them to identify them. Trevor is quite a bit taller than me and he was able to see a lot more than me so when he raised his rifle and closed the bolt that he had, up until that moment, carried with a cartridge in the chamber and the bolt up, I knew he had chosen his target.
At the report of the rifle, I saw a deer drop and a stag take off for parts unknown. Trevor said, “All I could see was her head, so I head shot her.” Sure enough, when we got to the hind, she was neatly dispatched by a classic head shot. We carried her out to an area that Chancy could get the vehicle to and he picked us and the deer up and transported us back to camp where we processed the hide and meat for the trip back to Brisbane in Trevor’s Engle’s fridge freezer along with the meat from the stag. Overall, it was a terrific trip, and I got to witness one of the best stalks that I have ever seen. I would like to thank Chancy for making time to take us when he had other commitments and he could just as easily turned us down. Thanks, mate.
