Australia has numerous poisonous snakes so in heavy cover the author wore these Snake Chapz from Crackshot Corporation in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
lesser scopes for the sort of hunting we were doing. The majority of our shots were less than 200 yards, and hogs and ‘roos are fairly large targets … but many of these shots had to be taken at dusk … or after dark with a spotlight. In such situations quality optics are a necessity, not a luxury.
Obviously, a .375 is far more car- tridge than is needed for hogs or ‘roos
but there was method in my madness. I’m planning to hunt water buffalo in the Northern Territory in the future and I really wanted some trigger time to get used to this rifl e … and I’m glad I took this approach. As a dangerous game cartridge, the .375 is considered about the minimum to use on buffalo. Adequate … but doesn’t dislocate your shoulder. The recoil of a .375 is enough to let you know it’s there but it’s really not all that uncomfortable … unlike the .416 Rigby, for example, with its much larger volume of powder. When I do get a chance to hunt buffalo I will have con- fi dence in this rifl e … which is a good thing when hunting something that can hurt you. The short story for rifl es to use on hogs and ‘roos is that something like the .22-250 or a 6mm (.243, for example) will do the job and you really don’t need anything larger. This method of hunting from
the truck involves a lot of driving and glassing, and during the day ‘roos tend to hang out in the thick brush. Between dusk and dawn they are more likely to be feeding in open areas. But it’s not unheard of to stumble onto groups dur- ing broad daylight. The largest group we ran into during the entire trip (there must have been sixty to seventy-fi ve or more) we drove up on around the middle of the day when we crested a hill. Pretty much the same applies to hogs – dawn and dusk are good but we also saw some during midday. Overall,
though, our best hunting – for both ‘roos and hogs – seemed to be late in the af- ternoon and early evening. Hunting at this time of day puts a premium on your optics … you need a good binocular and scope to pick out critters, especially the very dark hogs. In addition to the top-notch scopes
on my rifl es, I also carried a Leupold Golden Ring 10x42mm HD binocular and Leupold RX-1000 TBR Compact Digital Laser Rangefi nder. Both units saw a lot of use and often proved valu- able. Especially at dusk the binocular helped distinguish between stumps and kangaroos.
Basically, our hunting consisted
of a lot of driving around this very large ranch and doing a lot of glassing. Kangaroos and hogs could be just about anywhere and it was a matter of getting lucky enough to stumble onto them. Occasionally we might see only one or two of either animal, but more likely we’d spot several at once. As often as not, when the animals spotted us they would take off … though ‘roos were more likely than pigs to hang around to look at us for a little while. The idea was to get your scope onto the animals as quickly as possible. I like to shoot from a perfectly stable platform but Marc wants to leave the truck’s engine running. It’s his belief that ‘roos are more likely to take off when the sound changes as the engine goes quiet … so we adapted to shooting with a minor vibration in our shooting platform. Well, we still man- aged to hit some of what we shot at. Hunting on these ranches is nearly
The author used this CZ rifl e in .22-250 for much of his hunting “down under.”
Page 104 October — December 2011
as much a social event as it is shooting. I couldn’t tell you how often we stopped at various ranch houses to visit with a rancher and usually his wife. These ru- ral people are very friendly and it was a pleasure to meet them. One day we stopped for fuel at a rural gas station at the intersection of two highways. As Marc pumped gas, L.P. and I got out of the truck to stretch our legs. A man and his son at the adjacent pump struck up a conversation with us and the man asked where we were from. When we told him we were visiting from the United States he said he and his son were going to a wedding reception of a relative at a nearby ranch … and he invited us to join them. We thanked him but politely declined the invitation as we had only so much time for our hunting. (I’ll bet we’d
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