AUSTRALIA: Australia Buffalo Hunt With Australian Outback Buffalo Safaris

[Bullthrower338]

I met Aaron Corbett at DSC Convention a couple of years ago and became quite interested in making a trip to OZ to shoot a buffalo and see the NT. We spoke at the show several times and I left without booking a hunt because I had a trip to the Limpopo booked for August already. Aaron called me during the SCI show and threw an offer that was to enticing to pass up, four buffalo! I knew my Dad has wanted to go see OZ his whole life and this was a perfect opportunity to get him there. I asked Aaron if he would allow me to book the hunt for 2018 and he said no worries! I called up Pops and told him the good news that we were going to The NT hunting buffalo and of course he bitched that he didn’t want to spend the money and the flight was to long. So I had to resort to calling Mom to make him go. Miraculously he saw the error of his ways and decided to come along, he really was excited once he knew we were going.

Fast forward to DSC 18:
After a wonderful evening with the AH crowd at our annual supper, I was excited to get to the show and finish confirmation with Aaron. I got my dates set for August 1-7 and was quite happy to escape two weeks of the bloody miserable Houston humidity once again.
So @ActionBob and @Royal27 were cruising the show with me and Bob asked about the hunt, I explained my package and down we went to see if Aaron would match my deal for Bob. He did and I was really excited that Bob and Carol would be joining us on the trip.
I contacted several of our AH members and picked their brains on Buff hunting the NT,
My fear of damn snakes and of course bringing firearms into OZ. All of these guys were a great help, even Dr.Ray posting snake pictures was fun! The guys gave me great advice on where to store our rifles while in country and were most helpful. I made calls to the Sydney Police about firearms as I would have long lay overs both directions along with airline changes. This is where the idea of a camp gun got its appeal. Over the course of two weeks I spoke to three different people at the Sydney Police, two said I needed a gun permit for down in Sydney along with my NT license and another said I did not need one! I had visions of my 470 getting torch cut and thrown in a pile of scrap iron and changed direction. Camp gun it is. Now after this trip I honestly believe I was worried needlessly and wish I had brought my rifle. I would go ahead and get both permits just to be safe as I still got contradicting answers from the many people I asked along the way.

Yeah, I’m getting to the hunting part shortly!

 

[Pheroze]

Watching this thread with interest!

 

[Bullthrower338]

Dad flew down to Houston from Bozeman, Montana a few days early and we had a good time eating seafood and drinking a few beers. We made a final trip to Cabelas and I couldn’t find a damn thing I needed thus confirming that I must be good to go!
I packed my gear Sunday morning for our 10:40 PM departure from Intercontinental, I must one day quit this procrastination thing, well maybe tomorrow I will get around to it.
We flew United direct from Houston to Sydney after about 2-1/2 hours pounding 12 ounce sleeping pills at the United Club in the international terminal. A note worthy point on this flight is that for a 17-1/2 hour flight it wasn’t bad due to the late night departure. They served a dinner which wasn’t awesome by any standards, couple more beers and I slept a solid 9 hours. Arrived around 8am Sydney time. Passport control was simple and on to collect our bags and clear customs. Customs was a breeze and everyone we came in contact with were very nice and polite, quite a change from our TSA personnel here in the states. Seems that they actually like their jobs there. I found it comical that the contraband sniffing dog was a old bitch black lab that was definitely near the age to draw a Social Security check. I resisted the urge to pay the old man back for all of the things he pissed me off over as a kid and decided not to tip customs off to a suspicious old drug mule and cause a cavity search. That one would have probably backfired on me and it wouldn’t have been so damn funny when I was getting searched.
Got a day room across from the Airport at Rydges Hotel to take a shower and stash our gear while we checked out Sydney via the train.
Of course we missed our stop and decided to just walk from the next one. Luckily we found a pub within 10 blocks or so and enjoyed a local beer in a historic old bar.

We climbed up the stairs and got a nice view from the harbor bridge. Had a wonderful lunch on the harbor and headed back to the hotel for a little nap before our flight to Darwin.

We flew JetStar from Sydney to Darwin and I can not emphasize enough how bad they suck! My normal carryon bag cost me 60 bucks because it was to heavy and needed to be checked at the gate. The boarding process was like Father’s Day in Compton, complete confusion! No boarding groups, no front to back, a free for all, what I would assume a domestic flight in hell might just look like. I went to sleep in disgust before the flight took off and woke 4-1/2 hours later as the wheels touched down in Darwin at midnight.
We grabbed a cab to the Resort that Bob had arranged for us and finally to bed around 1:30am. I was surprised to find that the time was 30 minutes different from Sydney. Everyone acted like that was a normal thing, but a first for me.
We were up and ready to go around 7am. Met Bob and Carol in the hotel lobby and caught up while waiting on Aaron to pick us up.

I promise we are hunting tomorrow guys!

 

[Dr Ray]

Great story and I laughed.
Had lunch with actionbob when he and his wife Carole were in Cairns.
Small world after all!

 

[Royal27]

Been waiting for this one!

Keep writing Cody!

 

[cpr0312]

Enjoying the start, looking forward to more!

 

[jacques smith]

Father’s Day in Compton ( classic ). Have mucho fun Cody
Jacques

 

[Shootist43]

Ok Cody, you are forgiven. I see you decided to use a different thread to post your hunt. Looking forward to the next installments.

 

[sierraone]

Cody without a gun? Priceless!

 

[BRICKBURN]

Cody without a gun? Priceless!

Perhaps that was a good thing given the Jet Star cat rodeo!

 

[Ridgewalker]

And the plot thickens! I hate waiting for the next installment! Just like sitting at the airport waiting on your flight! Except, this is going to be fun!

 

[Bullthrower338]

Perhaps that was a good thing given the Jet Star cat rodeo!

View attachment 246060

That was actually pretty close Wayne!

 

[stug]

The only good thing about Jetstar is the competition and lower prices they bring, I would never fly with them heard too many horror stories.

 

[JPbowhunter]

I met Aaron Corbett at DSC Convention a couple of years ago and became quite interested in making a trip to OZ to shoot a buffalo and see the NT. We spoke at the show several times and I left without booking a hunt because I had a trip to the Limpopo booked for August already. Aaron called me during the SCI show and threw an offer that was to enticing to pass up, four buffalo! I knew my Dad has wanted to go see OZ his whole life and this was a perfect opportunity to get him there. I asked Aaron if he would allow me to book the hunt for 2018 and he said no worries! I called up Pops and told him the good news that we were going to The NT hunting buffalo and of course he bitched that he didn’t want to spend the money and the flight was to long. So I had to resort to calling Mom to make him go. Miraculously he saw the error of his ways and decided to come along, he really was excited once he knew we were going.

Fast forward to DSC 18:
After a wonderful evening with the AH crowd at our annual supper, I was excited to get to the show and finish confirmation with Aaron. I got my dates set for August 1-7 and was quite happy to escape two weeks of the bloody miserable Houston humidity once again.
So @ActionBob and @Royal27 were cruising the show with me and Bob asked about the hunt, I explained my package and down we went to see if Aaron would match my deal for Bob. He did and I was really excited that Bob and Carol would be joining us on the trip.
I contacted several of our AH members and picked their brains on Buff hunting the NT,
My fear of damn snakes and of course bringing firearms into OZ. All of these guys were a great help, even Dr.Ray posting snake pictures was fun! The guys gave me great advice on where to store our rifles while in country and were most helpful. I made calls to the Sydney Police about firearms as I would have long lay overs both directions along with airline changes. This is where the idea of a camp gun got its appeal. Over the course of two weeks I spoke to three different people at the Sydney Police, two said I needed a gun permit for down in Sydney along with my NT license and another said I did not need one! I had visions of my 470 getting torch cut and thrown in a pile of scrap iron and changed direction. Camp gun it is. Now after this trip I honestly believe I was worried needlessly and wish I had brought my rifle. I would go ahead and get both permits just to be safe as I still got contradicting answers from the many people I asked along the way.

Yeah, I’m getting to the hunting part shortly!

I've heard all kinds of stories about australia and guns up to and including that they're completely banned here.

We lost semi autos and pistols but other than that things aren't really different at all.

 

[Bullthrower338]

Aaron arrived around 0830, and we loaded up for the almost 7 hour drive down to the bush camp.
Our first stop was at the 303 Bar at the Adelaide River Inn. Now this place is cool, monster croc mounted out front and the water buff from Crocodile Dundee lifesized inside.

Sign using 303 brass, there was an enfield SMLE on either side. The beer was damn tasty!

Of course the old man couldn’t resist a croc Dundee pose.lol

We headed on down to Katherine and had lunch and a couple of beers at the country club.
On to Aaron’s mates home to trade out vehicles, out of the comfortable SUV and into a land cruiser, now we got to be getting close!
We swapped vehicles and hooked up the trailer and were on our way!

We turned off the pavement and onto dirt for a spell then a right at the blue fuel drum onto a single track for the remainder of the Trip to camp. It was around 2 hours back in on the track and absolutely beautiful country. We arrived at camp and I was pleasantly surprised, though not as nice as many African bush tent camps, this was set up nicely. A damn site more amenities than most of the elk camps I’ve been in. Running water and hot shower by means of an elevated water tank and drum heated by a wood fire. Decent tents with a real mattress and clean linens. A nice permanent structure to eat meals and a campfire, all I need! We got settled in and unpacked then met at the dinner building for a good meal. Aaron’s girlfriend Mary spent the week with us and did a fine job cooking for us. Only once was there a dish that was not edible. I had a suspicion of what it was because of her Lebanese linage. Evidently Bob, Carol and Dad did not as they dished theirselves a big old helping of hummus!
I enjoyed watching them try to eat it, Dad was looking around for a stray dog so he could lick its butt to get the taste out of his mouth. Bob did not disappoint either by busting her chops on what the hell that dish actually was.

Day One of hunting(well kind of):
We woke to some of the most vile sounding birds that I have ever heard. They were damn sure more annoying than my alarm clock back home, actually thought about smuggling some back just for those mornings that are hard to roll out of the rack after an evening of MacCallen delicious excessiveness! You would get up regardless of your hangover just to kill the bird.
Now rolling out at the crack of dawn is not the norm around camp, breakfast was served around 8ish. This is where we got our first and last taste of Vegemite! For those that have not had the bad luck to try this stuff, consider yourself not missing a damn thing! We normally use this stuff to put on a sponge to catch catfish on. We all concurred that it was not fit for human consumption and threw it away. Bob threw his to the big camp dog and the dog looked at him with a I’m not eating that expression and walked away from it.
We finally rolled out, Dad and I with Aaron and Bob and Carol with Red, Aaron’s other guide.
We saw buffalo from the time we left camp to the point we broke the steering arm on the cruiser about 18 miles from camp. I was not at all surprised at all that we broke something, these boys make our idea of off road travel seem like a drive through Yellowstone Park. Running over trees and bushes up to 6” diameter is what they refer to as pushing into the bush. I would say it is more Ramming your way through it. Anyway we crawl up out of a river bottom and into a large tree, I was pretty sure there was a steering issue because Aaron was pretty skilled at running over trees. We made an attempt to field engineer our way out and it wasn’t happening. We backed under a shade tree and Aaron informed us he would walk to camp and be back in a few hours. Dad and I were quite certain that he was being very optimistic about his time frame. He grabbed his Sako 7-08 and backpack and off into the bush he went. We had plenty of food and water, a 375 and plenty of room to wander around. We made the best out of the situation and took a walk around. About 10:30 that night the radio came to life, it was Bob and Red to the rescue. We were planning sleeping out in the bush as soon as it got dark. We actually hoped that they would not risk trying to get us in the dark due to the terrain. We could hear trees crashing long before we could see the lights of reds cruiser. It was an interesting trip out, almost tipping over in a dry creek bed was a added bit of excitement. We got back to camp around midnight and could tell Aaron was whipped. He told us about the herd of Jenny’s that he walked into and was charged by a Jack donkey which he shot in the face to stop him. Much more exciting than our day! Bob had a great day but I will let him tell his story. Thanks Bob for coming to get us and remembering some cold 4X!

Beautiful evening out in the bush

 

[Ridgewalker]

WOW what a first day! Looks and sounds like this is going to definitely be an exciting outback hunt!

 

[Bullthrower338]

The only good thing about Jetstar is the competition and lower prices they bring, I would never fly with them heard too many horror stories.

I was actually going to book a different airline on the way back to Sydney but Jen @Travel Express had me on Quantas in return. Thank God! Quantas was a decent flight.

 

[Bullthrower338]

I've heard all kinds of stories about australia and guns up to and including that they're completely banned here.

We lost semi autos and pistols but other than that things aren't really different at all.

It is not near as bad as I had envisioned but I have to say it is quite different from the States. Well most of them. I think OZ may be a little more lax than California, the North Eastern Cities and Chicago. Lol. We have it very good in regards to guns here and it is sobering when traveling and talking to gun people about the difference in our laws. The NT seemed pretty laid back to me. I loved it!
Cheers,
Cody

 

[tarbe]

Those look like Super Swampers on that Cruiser.

Oh wait, this is a hunting forum, not an off-road forum.



Really love the pic of your pop mesmerizing the buff. Priceless!

 

[Pheroze]

Evidently Bob, Carol and Dad did not as they dished theirselves a big old helping of hummus!
I enjoyed watching them try to eat it, Dad was looking around for a stray dog so he could lick its butt to get the taste out of his mouth. Bob did not disappoint either by busting her chops on what the hell that dish actually was.

Dude, hummus is one of the all time great goods...and home made too?