Episode 6, Season 1

In this episode, Rod and Jess hunt Australia’s biggest game species, the Asiatic Water Buffalo in the Northern Territory. 

After a six hour flight from Hobart, they landed in Darwin. It was midnight, and they still had a four hour drive to get to the hunting concession. 

After a quick pit stop at a convenience store to stock up on Snickers bars, they hit the long, long road to head deep into the Australian Outback. 

It is hard to describe just how big the landscape is in the Outback. Out here, they don’t measure land in acres or hectares. It’s measured in square kilometres! 

Our hunting concession is 2,200 square kilometres. To put that into perspective, that’s about 220,000 hectares or just over half a million acres. That’s the size of Mauritius. 

You could literally drive for days and not see a neighbour. 

And up here, there are no traditional seasons. No summer, winter, autumn and spring. Nope. It’s hot all year long. The only change to the seasons is wet or dry. 

The hunting season up here occurs during the dry season, as the roads are pretty much inaccessible once the rains come.

We finally pulled into the hunting concession just before 5am and hd a choice to make. Have a sleep first and hunt in the afternoon, or head straight back out and get cracking.

We’d been awake for over 30 hours, so it only took us about 5 seconds to make up our minds. Forget sleep. We were super pumped to see those big buffs in the wild. 

Throwing our bags into the caravan, we grabbed a quick bite to eat, got the Steyr .300 Win Mag out of its travel case, and jumped straight back in the 4WD to go hunt down some buffalo. 

Most of the land in the Northern Territory is owned by indigenous tribes and you cannot hunt on it without the correct permission and permits. Thankfully, our guide, Nondas was related to Jonathan, our tracker, through marriage, which gave him the exclusive hunting rights for the whole property. 

Owing to the sheer size of the land, not to mention the heat, it is impossible to completely spot and stalk. The areas are just too vast. But neither did we want to just shoot out of the car. 

So we drove until we saw signs of the buffalo, and then we got out and trekked the rest of the way on foot. 

We saw plenty of wildlife. According to the NT Tourism Board, over 400 species of birds, 150 species of mammals, 300 reptiles species, 50 species of frogs, 60 species of freshwater fish and countless different species of insects call the Territory home – with new species still being discovered.

It is hard to get your head around the fact that an area so remote can be teeming with so much wildlife. Then again, perhaps it is the absence of big cities that allows nature to flourish. The only people out here are the indigenous tribes, who have hunted and managed the landscape for thousands of years.

But perhaps the biggest oxymoron to get your head around out here is that, even in the face of such an abundance of life, death waits around every corner. 

You need to be tough to survive the Outback. From the salt water crocodiles that frequent the rivers, creeks and waterways, to the venomous snakes and spiders hidden where you least expect them, to the big game animals we’d come to hunt, to the sheer emptiness of the landscape itself.

We had been driving for a few hours when we stumbled across a broken down vehicle. They were local boys who had forgotten to put the car into 4WD before driving across the soft sand. They got bogged deep and had been unable to get themselves out. While we were able to winch them to safety fairly easily, we couldn’t help wondering what would have happened to them if we’d taken a different route. They’d already been out there for hours, and they were a long way from any help! I suppose that’s why there are stories of people getting lost out here and never being found.

While we were up here to hunt water buffalo, there are plenty of other animals to hunt including scrub bull, wild dog, feral pig and donkey. 

Yep, you might think donkeys are a strange thing to hunt, but there are over 5 million feral donkeys in the Territory and while they may seem harmless enough, they do untold damage to the native plants and bushes with their hooves – not to mention competing for limited food and water. 

We bagged ourselves a couple of Jesus taxis and were keen to try to meat back at camp. Donkey meat is a delicacy in Italy, where they use it to make salamis. 

We were ready to call it a day – the lack of sleep was definitely catching up on us – but we spotted a really nice buffalo bull on the way back to camp and all thoughts of sleep suddenly went out the window. 

It took three shots from a .300 Win Mag to get him on the ground, and several hours to break down the carcass.

By the time we got back in the car to head back to camp, the sun had well and truly set. After a quick bite to eat, we climbed into bed – and having been awake for more than 40 hours straight – were soon dead to the world. 

Day 2 started slow. We slept in, had a relaxed breakfast and didn’t hit the road until after 8am. 

By mid-morning, Jess faced down her first buffalo, an angry old beast that gave her the stinky eyeball before snorting and taking off into the bush.  

It didn’t take too long to get another opportunity. Jess even managed to do it with one less shot than Rod. 

Despite Nondas assuring us that buffalo aren’t usually aggressive, we’d interviewed Danny Vanbrugh, a Queensland taxidermist who learned the hard way what the horns of a buffalo feel like. So we allowed plenty of time to ensure the big buff was really down before we slowly and carefully approached.

The team hunted for five days in total, but you’ll have to wait or Part 2 to see what else they got.