Vern Evans
Red sand blasted my neck and face as winds relentlessly swirled across Australia’s Outback. Sitting atop a small, rocky outcropping, I pressed the binocular into my eye sockets to block the stinging grains of sand.
As daylight waned, so did the wind. Finally, I found what I’d been searching for — a lone bull camel fed out from a thin line of sparse trees on the flat land.
Hopping into the four-wheel drive utility rig nicknamed The Ute, I backtracked to pick up the landowner, Bob Blackett, whom I’d dropped off at a high point a mile to the east. Quickly, we made our way back toward the dromedary. Stopping a half-mile short of the camel, I grabbed the rifle and took off on foot. There were just enough trees to hide my approach. With a slight breeze in my face, I moved quickly.
I settled into position when I got within 200 yards of the one-humped creature, and I fed three .375 H&H Magnum rounds into the magazine and plunked another into the chamber. Marking where the bull last stood, I quietly crawled on hands and knees through soft sand to close the gap.
Reaching a small tangle of exposed tree roots, I stopped. The bull was still there. Browsing at the edge of a brush line, the camel’s awkwardly bowed neck supported its seemingly oversized head. It plucked leaves from a gidgee tree. It had no clue I was near.
Inching closer, the bull’s entire body came into view for the first time. The striking coat, prominent hump, mammoth knees and feet left me spellbound. As a kid, I’d seen them in zoos but didn’t pay much attention. Looking at the bull now, through my binoculars, I was captivated. I couldn’t help but stare at the primitive features of the wild bull. Then, with that sixth sense animals have, it craned its lanky neck and looked directly at me as if it knew I had been there the whole time. I’d underestimated their instincts and thought I’d just blown it.
Muscles on the bull’s blocky head grew taught and its tiny ears withdrew. Shoulder muscles tensed, and I knew it would be gone in an instant. In a reactionary response, I shouldered the .375 while simultaneously wrapping the sling around my arm and sliding the safety off. The instant the bead of the iron sites settled on the bull’s neck, the rifle roared. A 300-grain Winchester Silvertip dropped the one-ton creature.
Welcome to the Outback
By the time Bob reached me in The Ute, I was admiring the bull. We snapped a few photos, then I grabbed a knife, eager to lop off a hind quarter for dinner.
“We don’t have time for that,” Bob said. “It’s going to be dark soon, and we have to get back to the ranch. Cut out some backstrap for dinner, and we must go, quickly!”
Tossing a foot-long section of backstrap into a cooler, we were off.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Bob continued. “My ranch is so big and the land so flat, and with no other ranches around or any distant lights or landmarks for guidance, it’s easy to get lost out here, especially in the dark. And if you get lost, you can die. Don’t worry about the meat, camels are like rats out here. We killed over 200 from one herd last month and left them for the scavengers.”
It was June 1999, and I was in the middle of a 25-day do-it-yourself hunting adventure through the eastern half of Australia. At the time, my wife and I were living in Sumatra, Indonesia, where we worked as teachers at a private international school. It was my second hunting trip to Australia (and it wouldn’t be my last). From the moment I set foot in the Land Down Under, I had fallen in love with it, the people, and the wildlife. It was a world away from where I grew up in Oregon.
I had made a 25-hour drive from my previous hunting location along Australia’s southern coast, north toward Mount Isa, the country’s premier camel hunting destination. That’s where I met Bob.
Bob’s family ranch was unfathomably large—1.2 million acres. That’s more than 1,900 square miles. It’s so big he’d not seen it all, and he’d spent his entire life there. This part of the remote Australian Outback is cattle country, and Bob ran over 10,000 head.
Very few roads meandered through his ranch. It’s mostly sand, grass, and sparse acacia trees. Wind sweeps tire tracks away every day, sometimes as quickly as they’re laid down. Often, there is no backtracking, and with no high points to aid in navigation, getting lost is very real. There were few electronic navigation devices for public use back then, and Bob didn’t trust a compass, especially when severe windstorms could instantly cut visibility to an arm’s length.
Australia is home to free-ranging camels of the one humped, or dromedary, variety and is the only country where they can be hunted so aggressively. The summer months in Australia–November through February–are best for camel hunting. This is when the air is dry, water is scarce, and food is hard to come by. Those conditions force camels to congregate in giant herds, and hunters can greatly aid in the depredation efforts.
The downside of summer hunting in this unforgiving place is the extreme winds that move large masses of sand and the temperatures that exceed 120 degrees Fahrenheit each day.
“People die out here every summer from getting lost, running out of food and water, and suffering from heat stroke,” Bob said. He was clearly concerned with the odds of survival in winter, too.
Camels spread out during the winter months of June through August as rains replenish vegetation and fill cattle watering holes. By concentrating my efforts on these two factors, I was lucky enough to connect on multiple bulls during my time on the ranch.
They are challenging to pursue in winter, not only because of their weary habits, but for the harsh desert environment they call home and the fact that they’re so spread out.
Unfortunately, Bob’s land holds prime camel feed in the form of browse that is toxic for cattle to ingest, but camels thrive on the leaves. At the same time, waterholes built specifically for cattle continually attract camels.
The Camel Crisis
Camels were imported from India to Australia in the mid-1800s to help settlers explore its uncharted interior, lay railway lines, and work on telegraph installations. Camels were also used to assist in the construction of the world’s longest fence, the Dingo Barrier Fence, and to deliver goods to rural residents and mining camps.
Up until 1910, camels were still being shipped to Australia, many of which were accompanied by their Afghan camelmen because the Aussies struggled to handle and keep the camels alive. Not only did many of the Afghan people remain in Australia when the camels’ jobs were completed, but the camels were turned loose to roam where they may.
Feral camels wreak havoc on fences and gorge themselves on precious water reserves intended for cattle.
“These animals will gather in herds numbering into the thousands, and they can smell water from over 50 miles away,” Bob told me. “When you get a herd of a couple thousand camels, they can drink an entire water hole dry in one night, and that decimates cattle herds.”
Rainwater is collected in hard-pan depressions of the land, and with managed cattle, watering can last for months. Not so when camels intrude. Bottom line, overpopulated camels cost cattle ranchers dearly.
By the 1940s, Australia’s dromedaries roamed free and far. Sixty years after that, camel numbers soared to over half a million. As long as there is moisture in the leaves they consume, camels can go up to three months without drinking water.
Contrary to folklore, the camel’s hump is not used for storing water. It functions more like a radiator, storing heat during the day and slowly releasing it on cool nights to keep the animal warm. In times of desperation, the fatty tissues comprising the hump are capable of producing moisture that helps cool the camel and delay dehydration.
A camel’s translucent eyelids enable them to maintain a sense of direction in intense sandstorms, while long eyelashes help filter intense solar rays. Their nostrils can be sealed air-tight to keep sand from penetrating their nasal passages.
Not all farmers despise camels. Some go so far as to capture them by helicopter, selling the prime specimens to countries that race the long-legged nomads. Because they’ve had such a large area to range and breed, it’s said Australia’s camel populations are genetically superior to those in many Middle-Eastern countries, and Aussie bloodlines were in high demand.
For other ranchers, the only way to effectively control camel populations is to shoot them. In areas where camels reach plague-like proportions, government shooters are brought in. When researching where I wanted to hunt camels, I heard reports of over 500 camels being taken from a single herd. Bounties were also offered for camels in parts of the country at the time.
The camel crisis became so severe in the late 1990s, the government established the Australian Feral Camel Management Project (AFCMP). In 2009 a herd of some 6,000 camels invaded the small Outback town of Docket River, which had a population 350. The beasts reportedly destroyed water tanks, tore faucets from people’s homes, and more.
As camel populations exploded, they threatened the growth and existence of many native plants. When camel die-offs occurred near water holes, the drinking water for many outlying ranches and Aboriginal communities became contaminated.
In the early 2000s, the AFCMP launched a four-year, $15.5 million program to alleviate camel overpopulation. Between 2009 and 2013, more than 130,000 camels were shot, mostly from helicopters. Another 15,000 camels were shot and processed for humans to eat.
The Hunt Goes On
By nature, camels are continuously on the move and can be challenging to find in this vast land, especially in winter when I was hunting. Standing seven feet at the shoulders, large bulls can tip the scales to over a ton. Still, they require a lot of glassing to spot.
“Now’s a great time to target these lone bulls,” Bob told me over breakfast on the second morning of my hunt. We ate leftover camel backstrap from the previous night. It was good, lean, reminding me of the caribou my wife and I used to depend on when living in the Alaskan high Arctic.
“Not only are we taking out big breeding bulls, but these are the ones that aren’t afraid to bust through fences to reach cattle watering tanks,” Bob continued.
And because we were shooting one bull at a time, not wiping out herds, we were able to get meat to a couple Aboriginal communities in Bob’s area.
That morning, we were in the bush at first light. This time it didn’t take long to spot a bull, its light colored pelage standing out against the still dark sky. Bob took an angle in The Ute to get ahead of the bull, then dropped me off. He stayed back while I commenced a stalk. Again, a smattering of stubby acacia trees provided all the cover I needed.
The bull was moving, plucking leaves as it went. Getting ahead of the animal, I nestled the .375 into the notch of a little tree. Sitting behind it, cross-legged, both elbows on both knees, I was rock solid. When the bull fed into a gap, I rested the bead into the notch of the 200-yard sight and pressed the trigger. The buck of the rifle surprised me, but the report of the bullet hitting flesh did not. The bull staggered. A follow-up shot put it down.
Bob caught up with me, and we quartered the bull and headed back to the ranch to get the meat in the chiller. Soon we were back on the hunt, and another massive, lone bull fell to the .375, this one just inside 100 yards. We took the meat from that bull back to the ranch as well. From there, one of Bob’s hired hands delivered the meat to a nearby Aboriginal community.
On day three, Bob and I were up before the sun. The plan was to drop me off in a sandy-soiled, well-wooded area with loads of feed bordered by two water holes. I would spend the day hunting on foot. With 640,000 acres of land I’d not yet seen, my work was cut out for me. Bob would spend the day mending fences, returning two hours before dark to fetch me.
“Don’t get lost,” were his final words.
Standing alone in the immeasurable Outback, the feeling was surreal. Scanning the land through binoculars, parched desert gave way to spinifex grass, transforming to lush, green foliage behind. A mile away, a lone bull browsed. I was off, alone, just the way I like it.
It was a memorable day of camel hunting in some of the most unusual land I’d set foot in. Navigation was my number one concern. It consumed me at times, to the point I barely touched my lunch or drank water. I wanted to have reserves in case I wasn’t able to connect with Bob before nightfall. There were no radios, no maps. It was hunting on foot by instinct. Few things in hunting eclipse the feeling that one mistake can be costly.
Late in the afternoon, I headed toward the rendezvous point. A half-mile from the spot, a behemoth bull emerged from some trees. The stalk and shot were straight-forward. The ancient bull led a long life compared to the others that had fallen. Its incisors had been worn flush with the gum line. The gray coat was lackluster, and the wool, which once grew around the back of the neck and throat, was all but gone. Bob said the bull was at least 25 years old.
It took two hours to finally cape out the big bull. I wanted to take it home for a mount. Splitting the lips and cleaning the skull were unfamiliar to navigate, more closely resembling the experience of a moose than any other animal I’d worked on.
Bob showed up as planned. We loaded the meat, cape, and skull, and were off. Back at the ranch, I added 50 pounds of salt to the cape and gave thanks for one of the most unique hunting experiences of my life. Halfway through the 4,600 mile Australian safari, I was still eager to see what adventures awaited.
Read the full article here