AUSTRALIA: Northern Territory Cull Hunting With BIG COUNTRY SAFARIS AUSTRALIA - May 2025

[Green Chile]

This has been on my list for awhile with Alex. Looking forward to more content.

 

[BryceM]

Looks like a blast!

I'm adding ideas to my "fun" list faster than I'm crossing them off.

 

[PCC600]

I am assuming the hunting was down near the Roper River . Always plenty to shoot and really interesting country .

 

[UpNorthMI]

Monday - May 19 - Day 3 Hunting

The morning was another great warm morning, it's just a light shirt and light weight pants again for both of us, we end up wearing the same gear ......lol. First sport of the morning was a dingo spotted quite a way off the road, I had to get my Blaser .308 out and loaded, the dingo ran but made a fateful mistake of eventually stopping and looking back, first Australian dingo for me.

We covered a lot of ground of many types, today we were seeing a lot of open ground covered in the never ending termite mounds.

It was breakfast for lunch out in the wild, our guide Dylan cooked up some bacon and egg wraps

There were many young bulls who would stand their ground, almost curious about us, I'm convinced they had never seen a hunter and possibly never a human, this territory is seriously remote!

We spotted a couple of kangaroos' quite a way off, The larger one looked at me as if he was ready for a boxing match!

Later in the afternoon, both my son and I took another buffalo cull cow, mine was another excellent knock down shot with the .500/416 double rifle. My son getting very proficient with the Blaser R8 in .375.

Late in the afternoon, we were well deep into thick cover stalking a large group of buffalo, they were well over 100 yards so I watched my son take another 2 buffalo cull cows. It was well dark as we were exiting the thick cover, I was glad that we had GPS satellite devices as it really was not easy to find our buggy we had left on a small track in the middle of no where!

It had been a slightly quieter day with a total of 4 buffalo and 1 dingo. Our 3 days of hunting had produced a total of 18 animals, made up of:

2 Trophy Buffalo
10 Cull Buffalo Cows
3 Feral Donkey
2 Dingo
1 Feral Pig

Dylan had done a great job as our guide for these 3 days, he had educated us non stop on all the animals and birds we had seen and dealt with all of our questions. He was extremely competent, organized and managed to control us both when we had got into groups of buffalo. Tomorrow would be led by Alex Jagers as he had returned from his weekend family event.

 

[UpNorthMI]

Monday - May 19 - Day 3 Hunting - Father & Son

What a great way to spend time with your son, hunting together and exploring! My son had been away and busy in life with university and his girl, it's great to get nearly 2.5 weeks of time with him and to see him shoot that big rifle so well. Dylan gave me a great compliment on my son's safe gun handling and shooting ability. There is nothing like being a proud father!

Those culling ammo belts are about to get some serious use as Day 4 is 12 animals and Day 5 is 14 animals. There is a lot more to come!

Kuiu light weight vented shirts & Prana hiking pants! The only hunting trip where sun glasses were mandatory.

 

[TOBY458]

Just curious. How were you able to bring so much ammo? Are you restricted to 11lbs per customer on the flight over?

 

[UpNorthMI]

Just curious. How were you able to bring so much ammo? Are you restricted to 11lbs per customer on the flight over?

Toby,
That is a great question, I have to say I was a little nervous about ammo. To travel with I carried 40 rounds of 400 grain Hornady DGX Bonded in .500/416 NE and 40 rounds of 150 grain Barnes TSX in .308. My son carried 40 rounds of 300 grain Barnes TSX in .375 H&H and 40 rounds of Federal / 150 grain Nosler partition in .308.

We both had backup guns / barrels in .308, my primary gun was my .500/416 NE double rifle and my son's primary was a Blaser R8 in .375 H&H Mag.

Before we travelled I planned with our guide Alex Jagers to have spare .375 and spare .308 on hand as well as a spare .375 rifle in case I ran out of my double rifle ammo or in case we were shooting at much longer ranges.

There will be a lot more postings over the next few days and the animal count gets quite large, we shot a total of 65 animals, including 32 buffalo. As far as my .500/416 NE ammo went, I ended up with 7 rounds left at the end of the trip, of the 33 rounds fired only 2 rounds missed, 1 round was fired by my son who forgot how bad the trigger on my .500/416 NE double rifle is compared to his Blaser R8, it went over the back of a buffalo (he shot it with the other barrel and knocked the buffalo clean off it's feet), I fired one round at a moving buffalo and hit a large termite mound in the cover in front of the animal. The other 31 rounds all connected with buffalo, donkey & camel. This was the first hunting trip I had taken this double rifle on and I have to say it shot superbly with a red dot on it. The majority (70%) of my shooting was freehand and the gun just seemed to hit where ever I pointed that red dot! I did keep my shots limited to no more than 100 yards.

All Australian animals were tough, you will see a few video postings of buffalo, donkey and camels taking more .375 and .308 rounds than you would think was necessary. Take a look at other postings on YouTube these Australian animals can take some rounds. We ended up shooting many more .375 than what we took with us!

At the end of posting about our trip I will give the tally of ammo used during our trip along with some comments on our experience about effectiveness of both calibers and bullet types. I feel that we are in a position to give meaningful observations based on the numbers of large animals shot.

A big thanks to Alex for calming my ammunition fears prior to the trip and having a lot of extra .375 ammo on hand when we needed it. There were days my son shot through his 20 rounds on his culling belt and needed a lot more!

 

[UpNorthMI]

Lets see if we can get video to work?

 

[Sarg]

Great post, looks like you had a great time, I know most of that country myself.

Those aren’t Kangaroos by the way they are Wallaroos subspecies “Euro” in my other area there are Black Wallaroos !

Way down south there is a monster Black Wallaroo subspecies, scary buggers up close & look like they are wearing a Grey/Black ghillie suit.

Please check your DMs

 

[UpNorthMI]

 

[UpNorthMI]

 

[UpNorthMI]

Bumping into buffalo in thick cover.

 

[UpNorthMI]

A video clip of my son and our guide dealing with the chaos of a lot of animals in thick cover. We are culling buffalo cows, the cow in the video is shot twice with a .375 H&H Mag and just runs off, it's like they are armor plated. This cow was hit hard and left a good blood trail, we followed up and were able to finish the job after several hundred yards in very thick cover.

Our guide did an excellent job of managing the situation and keeping the selected cow in sight and communicating which animal she was.

 

[UpNorthMI]

I am assuming the hunting was down near the Roper River . Always plenty to shoot and really interesting country .

Its a very big area, we were not at Alex's main camp which was several hundred miles further in. We were based on cattle stations, several of these properties that we hunted were over 1 million acres each. We stayed with the ranch owners and staff, it was an eye opening experience about their life and how remote things were. We were made most welcome by many friendly people.

 

[TOBY458]

Looks like YouTube marked all your videos as age restricted, so I’m unable to pull them up for some reason. I’d love to see them!
I went and hunted buffalo in Australia in 2015. I shot three mature bulls and a cow. Your hunt sounds great!

 

[UpNorthMI]

Looks like YouTube marked all your videos as age restricted, so I’m unable to pull them up for some reason. I’d love to see them!
I went and hunted buffalo in Australia in 2015. I shot three mature bulls and a cow. Your hunt sounds great!

You are correct, this is my first attempt at posting video on here, I have to post them without the age restriction, I will post again.

 

[UpNorthMI]

Son's Trophy Buffalo

 

[UpNorthMI]

My trophy buffalo

 

[UpNorthMI]

 

[UpNorthMI]

Bumping into buffalo in thick cover.