Late November in the Northern Territory of Australia is wicked hot and there was no respite from the heat across the miles of floodplain where I stood. In the midday sun, the mirage made the water buffalo look like black fuzz balls on a blanket of green grass. I peered through my binoculars, which cut through the blur and gave me a good look at the small herd of buffalo.
“He’s the one I was hoping we’d find, but we need these other buffs between us to leave before we can do anything,” said Matt Kelman, my guide. His hat, which read Australia Wide Safaris, was plopped atop a disheveled mop of unkempt, sun-bleached hair. Jovial, sunburned and quick-witted, Matt fit my paradigm of an Australian hunting guide perfectly.
“He’s a very old bull, but I don’t like that he’s found himself a harem,” Matt observed.“He’s a bit too narrow to be breeding.”
The bull looked pretty good to me through the mirage, but I was new to judging water buffalo, though I had already seen a few hundred since our hunt began that morning. We were not looking for a high-scoring trophy, but a bull to cull for management purposes. My goal was to experience buffalo hunting in remote Australia; killing a record-book animal was not important to me.
As we waited in the heat, my eyes burned from the salty sweat dripping down my face. It seemed that every inch of my clothing was soaked. We watched the cows, calves and young bulls amble by the old bull as he stood ankle-deep in mud, feasting on the lush greenery below him. Soon they were past him, and I was wondering if he would follow his herd. Then, as if scripted to do the very thing we hoped, the black brute turned around and laid down in the low, waterlogged spot where he’d been standing, while his herd moved off into the brush.
Matt swung his big 577 Nitro Express double rifle over his shoulder and began walking briskly toward the bull. He didn’t need to tell me it was time to close the gap. I followed, excited but with guarded optimism. Everything would have to go right for us to get close enough for a shot because there was no cover between us and our quarry.
Asiatic water buffalo, though recognized as Australia’s most iconic game animal, are not actually native to Australia. They were imported from Indonesia to be used as meat for settlers in the first half of the 19th century. They have been hunted ever since, yet their numbers continued to increase greatly throughout the Northern Territory. Finally, in the 1980s a plan was put in place to cull buffalo numbers due to outbreaks of brucellosis and tuberculosis. After an exhaustive culling campaign that ended two decades ago, the area was declared free of the bovine diseases and the populations rebounded.
The large bulls are impressive and imposing, tipping the scales at more than a ton. Their necks appear ridiculously thick with muscle—muscle necessary to support the heavy set of long, curved horns that come straight out from the sides of their heads.
As far as temperament is concerned, I found that water buffalo are not as spooky as their African cousins. I’ve noticed a sense of curiosity that does not exist in Africa’s Cape buffalo. Some of this has do with poaching as well as the type of predation. Saltwater crocs claim some water buffalo, and dingoes can kill the occasional calf, but the predation and poaching is not even comparable to Africa.
When wounded, water buffalo sometimes charge the hunter, and Matt has had to shoot himself out of a number of close calls. Some of the charges he experienced early in his career made him a believer in double rifles as the weapon of choice for backing up clients.
I found Matt’s obsession with fine double rifles contagious. His collection is extensive, and despite being pieces of fine art, his rifles are working rifles that often vacate the cabinets in his gun room and are unleashed in the outback.
While looking for a suitable bull for the hunt, we kept a 470 Nitro Express double available as well as a scoped 375 H&H. If the shot was in the open and on the longer side, the 375 was the best choice.
As we made our way through his property the first morning of our hunt, I reveled in the fact that I was in Australia, a place very foreign to me. The Carmor Plains, which border Kakadu National Park, are home to an abundance of wildlife. A troop of kangaroos hopped by, one carrying a tiny baby inside her pouch, ears perked and seeming to enjoy the ride. We saw a few wild hogs early in the morning, as well as several big herds of buffalo.
Occasionally, Matt would point out some of the more exceptional bulls, many with horns that would score 100 inches or more SCI. I knew bulls that big were special animals and I was surprised to see so many.
Matt explained that November can be an excellent time to spot the really big bulls because the grass is low and the vegetation sparse. I had lucked into a November hunt, before the rains began. While his clients regularly take very large bulls during all seasons, his favorite time to hunt, he explained, is in the wet season when the vegetation and long grass take over.
The hunting is more intense then, and the shots usually very close. During that time, he often has to use his airboat to get around, which adds to the adventure.
Matt had been seeing an old, narrow-horned bull with poor genetics that he was hoping to find again for me. After a few hours of searching, he spotted him as we were glassing herds scattered across the immense expanse of grasslands. And once the bull laid down and faced away, Matt began our plan to get close enough for a shot.
The stalk proceeded as we steadily closed the gap. We moved slowly through the heat and watched the bull, always ready to stop and freeze if his head swung in our direction.
When we were under 100 yards, the bull gazed in our direction, then quickly stood up and rushed out of the water, sending a spray of gray mud flying as he ran. Then he spun around and froze, quartering toward us, looking down his nose at us with the defiant look that seemed to be a trademark among some of the older bulls.
“Go ahead and take him if you can,” Matt whispered.
I took a knee and put the crosshairs on the point of his shoulder. The 375 roared, followed by a distinct watery smack as the bullet hit home. The bull lunged forward a few yards and then turned to run away. I cycled another shell and tried for the base of the tail, hoping to anchor the bull. Another smack and the bull slowed down. On the third shot, he fell dead.
We made a careful approach and Matt had me put one more in his spine for insurance. This seemed prudent after hearing some of the stories he had of wounded buffalo charging at close quarters. Standing over the dead buffalo, my heart rate dropped as the tension of the stalk and kill faded and was replaced with a reverence for the old bull.
He was magnificent—old and battered and huge in the body. From the reading I’d done on Australian hunting, I always felt the water buffalo was the premier game animal. I knew if I could ever pull off a trip, I would pursue one. Matt had delivered in a big way in a small amount of time.
My hunt had been short because I’d combined it with some traveling in Australia as well as a short hunt in New Zealand. Matt assured me that even in a day and a half he would have no problem finding a suitable bull and that we would probably have time to look for a wild hog if we finished early.
We loaded the bull in the midday heat and headed back to camp. The adventure did not end with the killing of the buffalo, but continued throughout the day.
Back at camp, Matt gave me a bit of a tour. He asked me if I had met Bull, his “pet” crocodile. I had seen the enclosure and peeked in the evening before, but only saw the croc’s eyes and nose in the water.
“It’s time for Bull’s lunch and I was hoping you could help me with that.”
I was intrigued by this as I followed him into his gun room. He found a nice 12-gauge over-and-under and handed me a few shells. We headed out from camp on foot to the edge of an opening that held a flock of pied geese.
“See if you can get two,” he whispered. We stepped out of the brush, and the flock took off. I knocked down one bird, then tracked another as it turned hard in the air and started to angle away. When the gun went off, the goose folded and smacked the ground with a thud.
“Nice shooting, mate,” Matt told me as we gathered the birds.
With our fresh croc food, Matt led me to Bull’s cage—a very sturdy, six-foot chain link fence that encompassed a low-lying bog topped with green algae and a tree that offered shade over a patch of green grass. Fastened to the fence was a sign introducing Bull as a 16-foot croc and warning visitors to “leave the bloody gate closed.” This seemed wise.
Matt opened the gate and walked through with the two geese dangling from his hand as if he was going to pour a cup of dog food to a pet Labrador retriever. As he approached, Bull made his way out of the water and up into the grass.
I was thinking I was about to witness the next Darwin Award–winning incident when Matt looked back at me and explained that: “We have an understanding, Bull and I.”
Then he sat on the crocodile!
If cavemen ever rode on dinosaurs, I figured this was as close to what it would have looked like. After the two got reacquainted, Bull waited patiently as Matt stepped off him and walked a few feet in front of his massive head. Then he tossed one of the geese to him. Bull snatched it out of the air with his powerful jaws and after a few loud crunches, swallowed it. After the next goose was eaten, Matt stepped out of the enclosure and closed the gate as Bull slithered back into his personal pond.
Only then did I notice that his pond was only 50 yards from where I slept. As we walked away, I glanced over my shoulder to double-check that the bloody gate was closed and locked.
We headed back to the truck for an evening hog hunt, hoping to find a boar that I could put a stalk on. After shooting one of his 470 Nitro Express double rifles, I was committed to using that for the evening hunt.
We made our way slowly through the bottoms, and I enjoyed the adventure, eyes always ahead and ready for a hog to bust out of the swamp while my hands hefted the big 470. Even though it was the dry season, water still covered some of the lower areas of the swamp.
As we moved through the bottomland, we saw several hogs and even a small herd of banteng that winded us and crashed away through the brush.
Suddenly, Matt stopped and held his hand out to my chest. He pointed ahead a few yards at the ground. I figured he must have seen a snake and that it was probably one of the many infamously venomous Australian varieties, but I could not make anything out where he was pointing. Maybe it was a friendly taipan or an amiable death adder that he had an “understanding” with and would take home as a pet, like Bull. After witnessing Matt’s interactions with that crocodile, nothing would have surprised me.
The spot he pointed to was a small billabong filled with a mix of water and slimy muck. On closer inspection, I finally saw what he was looking at. It was not a snake. Instead, there was a prehistoric set of eyeballs just above the surface, and in front of those—a substantial distance in front of them, I might add—a set of nostrils. The rest of the crocodile was completely hidden under the muck.
“They can stay like that a really long time,” Matt explained. “Their heart rate drops, and they just sit there until a pig comes too close.”
Or us, I thought to myself.
Matt grabbed a hefty stick and tossed it in a short arch toward the reptile’s head. In a flash, it was as if someone had detonated a hand grenade under the muck. The slough erupted in a violent storm of spraying water and mud as the croc snapped the stick out of the air before it reached the water. Then the croc submerged itself and, once the muddy ripples settled, the little lagoon was transformed into a place of silent serenity with no sign of the pending death that lurked just beneath surface.
As we continued around the waterhole, I made a wider arch than Matt while scrutinizing the rest of the mud puddles with more than a bit of suspicion.
As the sun plunged into the horizon, hogs started materializing all around us, just as Matt had told me would happen. Our wind was good as we moved forward. A large female with some young sauntered by, the backs of her piglets barely visible in the grass.
A minute later, a large male moved cautiously through the brush, his large tusks showing bright white against his black face in the failing light.
After hunting slowly for another hundred yards, Matt spotted two younger boars feeding about 60 yards away. The wind was still perfect as we stalked in closer. Once we’d made it to 20 yards, I put the big double rifle to my shoulder, and I was immediately jolted by the hefty recoil. The boar dropped when the 400-grain soft hit him, as one would expect, and moved no more.
We were both smiles as we approached the animal. We had packed a lot of hunting into a day’s time and accomplished more than we’d set out to do. As we carried the boar out in the setting sun, it felt like a perfect end to my long-awaited Australian adventure.
Note: This article originally appeared in the 2019 Guns & Hunting issue of Sporting Classics magazine. Nick’s adventures can be followed through @nickmuckerman on Instagram.