G'day fellas, as mentioned I'm Ben from Central Australia near Uluru. We bowhunt a lot in the desert here, mostly for camel which are feral and a huge environmental problem. It also makes great ribs, steak and bbq so I dont need much of an excuse to go for a hunt. My mate just came over from the dark side last weekend- I sold him my old bow with sights n kit ready to shoot - and he sold his crossbow to pay for it. And I got a call the following wednesday to say he had finally dropped a camel with it. I told him it was cause the bow remembered what to do and helped him out even tho he is crap (He is a good mate!) Anyways the boys live out at an aboriginal community in the Western Desert area of NT Australia and after that initial bit of success they came up with a plan. Basically they will try and shoot a camel every week, take the best cuts in the eskys and throw as much as possible of the rest on the back of the ute for the camp dogs. My mate is a chef so he is planning on holding cooking classes with the young people as part of his youth worker job out there and trying to get everyone into eating camel more. Only snag is he now needs some fresh dead ones.. Could I help out? You bet! So we headed out all tooled up ready to go. Had a few quiet bevvies that night and were off early the next morning. The camels are getting pretty toey round there, they see a car at about 300m and they run now. Apparently a lot of locals and the grader drivers have been shooting at them from the roads. So we had a bit of trouble getting in on any and had a failed stalk and ambush ( you spot the camels, do a big 1km circuit out in front to a "pinch" in the land where they are likely to walk then have the two remaining guys try to stalk in on the mob from the other direction. Often the camels spot the stalkers but not the ambush guy who will get a clean shot as the move past. This time the went the other direction totally.... Anyway we had pretty much given up and were heading back the 20kms or so to home when we drove thru a scattered mob, we jumped off and the car kept going. Luckily the wind was good and the ones off to the far left wandered back past us trying to rejoin the rest of the mob. I nailed the bull low up the leg. No stalking involved just a bit of luck really - right place right time. And meat is meat so we loaded up the ute with this big boy. Was funny as driving back in camp - like being the Pied Piper of dogs, there were about 40 of them following us as we drove around the community. Then talk about some blues as we threw out the meat still all of them were full by the end. After lunch we put in a stalk on a little mob of 3 satelite bulls feeding. It was a long way across some pretty open country but my mate followed me in to 38m on this boy - but he just wouldnt turn for a shot! we waited for about 5 minutes for it to turn for a better quartering away angle and by then my poor mate had a shocking case of the nerves and missed totally. I shouldnt laugh but it is a pretty big thing to entirely miss! Anyways they trotted away from the arrow where it hit the dirt and pulled up at 60m. I asked him if he wanted another shot but he was like "naa i cant even hit it at 40m so not much point trying at 60m" So I took the shot and it went down nicely too after a short run. And still more cutting up.. This time for the freezers and everyone round the community (including us) who missed out from the mornings meat delivery run. Luckily we had a chainsaw this time and the axes.... Next morning was really nice, coolish and no bloody flies now. Really pretty country I reckon. We were pretty right for meat so we went for a bit of an explore tryin
Cool. Thanks for sharing! What is camel meat like? Is that hump fatty? It would make an ugly taxidermy mount but probably a nice rug.
That is awesome....when I finally make it over to New Zealand for a hunt, I may have to swing over into Aussie for some camel bowhunting action...that looks like loads of fun! Good shooting!
Humans. We tend to mess things up that way. The same way hogs are here. or any big game animal at all is in New Zealand. It's how many sheep populations exist where they once didn't. We bring animals and either accidentally or purposefully introduce them into the wild.
Thanks for all the kind words fellas, glad it was of some interest. They stand really tall so they look even bigger on the hoof. A good big bull camel weighs about 1500lbs. Its awesome to heart shoot one, have it bolt then pile up! They go down with a thump then. I actually have a couple fellas visiting from the US soon - they want to meet up and shoot their first camel as well! should be a laugh i reckon
