I sighted in the borrowed Ruger Super Redhawk on the morning of the first day in camp while Peter, Donna, and Paul were busy doing other things. I borrowed a cardboard box from Paul to use as a target and after a few shots, I had it grouping well and zeroed at 50 yards. Unfortunatley the only ammo in camp for the gun was the 50 rounds of ammo that I had brought with me. None of my leftover ammo from two years ago had made it to camp so I sighted the Ultadot in with as few rounds as possible. Shortly thereafter, Peter, Donna, and I headed out for our first day afield.

We hardly made it out of sight of camp when a wild boar appeared on the edge of the road. Peter asked me if I wanted to shoot it? I asked how much hogs were going for these days and he said they were "free". Hmmm...let me think about it..."boom"! The hog was quartering away and the Barnes Buster hit him on his right sight angling forward through the chest and exiting on the opposite side. He gave little reaction to the shot but he ran forward and just stood there for a moment before beginning to run again. I fired another shot in his general vicinity but I don't think that I touched him on that shot.
\:D


He crossed the road out of sight. I followed Peter into the bush and I picked up the blood trail but Peter had already spotted the hog. He hadn't gone far; he was just standing there and he was definitely feeling poorly. I shot him again, low in the right shoulder and he hit the ground. Amazingly, he got back up so I put another shot in the same shoulder a couple inches from the previous one and this time he stayed down. He finally expired and quit moving completely a few minutes later. I had my first hand-gunned Australian animal on the ground!


Even though we didn't take a buffalo on the first day we definitely saw many of them, including some that I thought were shooters. However, Peter was being a bit selective since it was our first day of hunting and I was the only hunter in camp.







I also saw many kangaroos on the trip:


Dingos:


And plenty of feral donkeys:


We also saw lots of wild horses and scrub bulls (wild cattle). In order to control their numbers, any of these animals could be taken by hunters at no cost (with the exception of scrub bulls) if desired but since I had only a few cartridges in camp, I felt that I needed to be a bit conservative.

To be continued...