One Heck Of A Ride

198 The South Pacific antlers and skins through Australian Customs in Brisbane and catching my next flight to Darwin, where I hooked up with an Australian bowhunter named Chris Ogle who had been recommended by an Australian taxidermist. Chris wasn’t a guide. His main job was restoring wheelchairs for the handicapped, but he had a lot of experience hunting Australia’s “Top End,” and he had offered to take me hunting when I was in his corner of the world. From Darwin, we drove to the Mary River Station in the Northern Territory, where we camped without a tent, cooked over a campfire and slept on the ground. Because of the problems of legally taking a firearm in and out of Papua New Guinea, I had left my rifles at home and borrowed a .303 British military rifle from Chris. Ballistically, there is very little difference in the .303 British cartridge and a .30-06 Springfield. British hunters have used it to take the world’s largest game, including every type of wild oxen, rhino and elephant in Asia and Africa, but (as I learned) not without problems. When the first Australian water buffalo I shot with my borrowed rifle finally went down after I shot him five or six times, I got a camera and snapped a photo at the instant the bull recovered and tossed Chris into the air. When the beast Chris Ogle on the bull and is launched! Next the bull came straight at the Author turned to come after me, I dropped the camera, grabbed a 12-gauge shotgun loaded with buckshot from the truck, and hit him twice, but only turned him. I had to fire two more shots with the .303 to end that dance. It was exciting, but it would not have happened if I’d been using my .458 or .375. (The photo I hastily took of that angry wounded buffalo was not the best, but it clearly showed Chris being tossed. After returning to Lompoc, I had a poster-size enlargement made and mailed it to Chris.) The two other buffalo I shot on this trip presented no such problems, but both took Authors second bull multiple heart/lung hits before going down. The bullets from that rifle just didn’t penetrate enough to reach their vitals. I had one-shot kills on feral goats later, though. Author with a good Barramundi from the billa bong As mentioned earlier, Chris and I slept on the ground under the stars on this hunt, and I woke up in the middle of one night to hear something moving around our campsite in a quiet billabong. When I saw the animal