Twin Elements Podcast · Hunting Stories
Bedded Boars: Patience, Anatomy & Tough Shots In The Mud
Every boar we found on our recent Coburg Peninsula trip was bedded. Not one was up feeding when we spotted it. In the extreme heat and humidity, with water this scarce, that's simply where the pigs were going to be. Tucked into any available shade close to the last patch of mud that didn't have a saltwater crocodile living in it. Due to the animals, weather and proximity to water, this trip was non stop action. It ended up being stalk after stalk of lessons in anatomy, shot placement and patience.
Cobourg Scenery
In This Report
A precious comodity - the last water
Its October which means its late in the dry season.
Across Australia's Northern territory majority of the fresh water sources have dried to small, disconnected pools. This kind of resource scarce ground forces every animal toward the same handful of water sources.
In the image above, you can see the diverse highway system o game trials headed from floodplains where the animals feed, back to the water.
Why Bedded Beats Feeding
Shot Sequence
The bedded boar was spotted first by his ear, barely twitching above the mud line. What follows is the stalk in, the final positioning for a clean angle, and the shot execution itself.
A feeding boar moves fast and covers ground erratically. Its genuinely hard to keep pace with. On the contrary, a bedded boar isn't going anywhere. He might shuffle within his wallow, but he's not abandoning that spot for another one across the property. That gives you time, something feeding animals rarely offer.
Time is valuable on a stalk.
Time to assess the angle you want to achieve rather than just the angle you happened to spot him at, time to pick a better line of approach, and time to let your instincts settle rather than rushing on adrenaline.
A bedded animal is also, put simply, a stationary target. locked into one position, you have appropriate time to range it, settle, and execute. Compare that to an animals thats walking. Even though it may be upright and broadside, (a far easier shot anatomically) that animal could walk in and out of range, or flee the moment it senses you or you try to pull it up with an "Oi".
You can't rewind and play catch-up in bowhunting, that doesn't exist. Once an animals up from its bed and moving, you've lost the one advantage bedded game hands you.
That last point matters more than people expect. The natural impulse when you spot a big bedded boar is to think you need to close the distance immediately before he wakes up and leaves. In reality, he's probably been in that bed for hours already, and he's not going anywhere in the next two minutes. Rushing the last thirty steps instead of taking an extra sixty seconds to arc around for a better angle is the single biggest way people blow these stalks. A masked lapwing (plover / bird) giving an alarm call every five minutes is background noise to a dozing boar. The same call firing every six seconds because you're crashing toward him is an alarm bell.
In The Thick Of It
"Step. Stop. Listen. That's really the whole method. The wind was a steady south easterly that trip, and every stall to check it was time well spent, not time wasted."
Why the Gear Actually Matters Here
Gear - The Pointy End
Bedded boars are almost always partially obstructed.
Whether its mud, water, matted hair, a fallen log, dense root systems, theres always something to contend with. As bowhunters, that changes and requires thought towards what gear you should be shooting.
We run solid two blade, cut on contact broad heads for exactly this reason. Mechanical or three blade heads lose penetration fast once they're fighting through mud, debris, and a boar's genuinely thick hide and shield.
We know too well, that a shot that only gets partial penetration on an animal this size is how you end up trailing (or losing) a wounded pig rather than recovering it cleanly.
A bedded posture works against you here too. With the animals legs folded up alongside the body, a boar naturally shields more of its vital cavity than it would standing or walking, sometimes leaving only a sliver at the armpit or a genuinely inferior angle through the rib cage as your only option. It's a harder shot to place well by nature, which is exactly why the margin for error increases and potential loss of penetration needs to be as small as possible.
Arrow setup matters just as much. A properly supported insert / outsert configuration reduces deflection or snapping when you need it to hold tough and punch through a shoulder, scapula, or spine. All of which, on a hundred plus kilogram floodplains boar with an inch of fighting shield plus solid bone underneath, is a real possibility, not a hypothetical. And because bedded boars often lie low in peculiar areas, they present narrow, obstructed windows to shoot through. Take for example, a gap under a fallen limb, or a shot that has to clear a bank. Sometimes in a mob situation, its slipping the arrow past multiple other bodies to take the boar bedded at the back of the mob.
It's worth practising your archery shots from kneeling, seated, and squatting positions long before you're actually in that scenario. A single, adjustable-slider sight pin has been a genuine advantage for us here.
Rather than guessing yardage between fixed pins such as twenty, thirty or forty.
If the pigs lying at an awkward in between range, such as 26 meters. We can use the range finder to confirm the distance, then dial the sight and single pin straight to the distance. "twenty six" meter mark, and know exactly where that arrow's landing.
Floodplains Hogs
The Double
Buried Deep
The best stretch of the whole trip came at a tiny waterhole. Barely the size of a tennis court, the one spot we were fairly confident didn't have a crocodile in it due to the sheer amount of wildlife sign. There were buffalo, boars, wallabies brolgas and other wildlife utilising this water source.
As a result, it turned into an absolute oasis for pigs once the rest of the surrounding country side had mostly dried up.
The first double came almost by accident. We'd glassed one boar submerged to the chin in mud, only his back and ears showing. Within twenty yards, we hadn't even clocked that there was a second boar bedded behind a log. Both were buried so deep there was barely a shot angle available. We had to wait, with James climbing onto a nearby fallen log just to get enough elevation to change the angle in his favour. Aiming low on the water line, we knew that the arrow would enter high and angle into the vitals. The first boar didn't run far once hit. We watched him perform an arc into the timber before tipping over. Meanwhile, the second didn't even flinch at the commotion, he simply shifted to another patch of mud a few metres over. This gave James a second to place another arrow on the string and within a few seconds get another shot away. Two mature boars, one location, all without moving our feet!
He's Got Tusks
The second double, later that same trip, was tighter still. A big boar stood up just long enough for me to clock his ivory and frame. He was genuinely a 44 gallon keg on legs. Pushing one hundred kilos plus!
We watched him move off the water before re-bedding among some mangrove roots and deadfall. The wind wasn't cooperating, so James and I knew we'd need to get inside five metres to have any real shot. Creeping across dry, crackly mud toward an animal that's probably never encountered a human in its life is its own kind of tension. Sure enough, as we edged around a tree at full draw, he was already up and staring straight at us, having heard our approach and clearly aware something wasn't right even if he couldn't place what it was. He held near dead on, until his bluff ended and he walked out as if to flee. Quickly, I let out an "Oi" which pulled him up, and with a quick re shuffle, dropped to my knees to clear a branch which lay over his vitals. When the pin settled on his heart, I squeezed the release only for that hallmark "crack" to echo as arrow met scapula. The two blade broad head did its job again and the boar barely made it a few steps. Walking up to that pig, I spotted a second boar lying under a log less than fifty metres off, completely undisturbed by the first shot. I signalled to James the infamous 'he's got tusks", while pointing to my own jaw, then we stalked into fifteen metres. This shot was one of the easier ones as the boar lay almost like a dog, legs splayed out on cold cement, cooling its belly. I picked my spot, touched off the shot and watched as another big brute of a boar went down thirty to forty metres from where we stood.
We'd walked what felt like ten kilometres that morning without a single decent pig encounter. Then one small, secluded waterhole delivered more opportunities in an afternoon than the rest of the trip combined. Serving as a good reminder that in genuinely dry, resource scarce country, finding the one water source everything is funnelling toward matters more than covering ground aimlessly.
Busting Bedded Boars
Just a few of the boars turned up from that remote stretch of water in remote Cobourg peninsula NT. A day thats likely never to be repeated again, where the right mix of circumstance met opportunity!
Wildlife
In truly remote places you find some remarkable opportunities to enjoy nature.
These creatures seemed to have a reduced flight zone, allowing us to have some memorable moments.
Shop Our Prints
The Adventure Continues
Join the Twin Elements team as they head back into the Australian bush.
Want the full story behind this episode? Listen to the podcast or watch on YouTube.
This piece is adapted from a Twin Elements Podcast episode on bedded boar hunting tactics, drawn from the Coburg Peninsula banteng and boar trip with Dingo Creek Hunting Safaris.
