Twin Elements Podcast · Hunting Stories
Bowhunting Banteng on Coburg Peninsula: Bulls, Blind Eyes, and a Dingo Den
Some hunts feel like more than a hunt.
This one, up on the Cobourg Peninsula with Pato and the crew at Dingo Creek Hunting Safaris, was one of those. Six action packed days bowhunting wild banteng bulls in one of the most remote corners of Australia, alongside James and our father Nick. Adventuring in a landscape so untouched that a four plus metre saltwater crocodile had been spotted eating a green sea turtle literally hundreds of meters off the front of our camp beach the week before we arrived.
Getting there is its own reminder of just how remote this country is.
Fly into Darwin, then travel out through the Jabiru township, cross the east alligator river / infamous "Cahill's Crossing" and continue on to Cobourg. A stretch of the Northern Territory dotted with only a handful of small Indigenous communities and about as far from anywhere on mainland Australia as it gets.
In This Report
- A Species Most Australians Have Never Heard Of
- My Stalk: A Blind Eye and One Arrow
- James's Stalk: Cameras Dying at the Worst Possible Moment
- The Moment Neither of Us Expected
- Not a Pest-Control Mission
From the Field
A Species Most Australians Have Never Heard Of
Banteng are wild cattle, native to Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand, and Burma. Ours descend from a small herd left behind when a British settlement at Port Essington on the Cobourg Peninsula failed and was abandoned back in 1849.
The story goes, that a few domestic Bali cattle went feral and established themselves into a population of thousands today. Remarkably and an important point, they have remained genetically isolated ever since. There's no other wild herd anywhere near them to interbreed with, which makes this population likely to be the largest pure wild banteng population left on Earth.
A strange paradox indeed. An endangered globally animal, yet Banteng are classified as a feral pest here in Australia.
The politics revolving around these animals is a topic for debate. Management strategies are evolving and theres heated opinion amongst different stakeholders.
Currently, legal Banteng hunting survives through outfitters like Pato, who pay serious money in tags back to the NLC and the local Indigenous communities to maintain legal, guided access. It's an uncomfortable truth of conservation economics.
If hunting didn't put a dollar value on these animals, there'd be nothing stopping a cull that wipes the population out overnight, the same way we've seen happen with feral herds elsewhere.
Whatever your view on trophy hunting, it's worth understanding that the alternative here likely isn't "the animals get left alone".... It's "the animals get removed entirely."
The bulls themselves are striking.
Almost completely black in colour with bold white stockings and rump markings.
Their horns are unique to other hunt able Australian bovine species too. Built with upright, forward curving horns anchored by a solid boss. This boss is similar in structure to Cape buffalo in Africa. Younger bulls carry a noticeably different coat, a darker roan, brown, before maturing into that jet-black colouring with age. The cows run a caramel, tan, brown colour with far more delicate, sometimes pendulous horns. Their horns occasionally curl back dangerously close to their own skulls, with nothing to trim them the way a stockman would with domestic cattle. Behaviour and mannerism wise, they're unique also. Unlike buffalo, which just plough straight through timber, banteng move similarly to deer. Ducking, weaving, genuinely agile, and switched on enough to pick you out from well over a hundred metres if you're careless.
Banteng Bulls
My Stalk: A Blind Eye and One Arrow
We spent the better part of our first morning covering country, finding little in the way of living creatures. Having walked about six kilometres toward where we wanted to hunt without seeing so much as a track. We were mainly just navigating old game trails. Appreciating the abundance of birdlife, the odd dingo, nothing else.
Then we hit a section in front of us where the floodplain met a stretch of paperbark and it just opened up. Mounds of fresh banteng scat, entrenched game trails, highways of sign. We followed one with the wind in our face and started finding banteng everywhere.
Not much later and we laid eyes on our first lone bull. Bedded up in the sand ridges off the floodplain, it was an easy stalk to get within thirty seven metres. He wasn't the mature bull we were after, although an encounter and practise stalk was exactly what we needed. It was the moment the whole morning clicked into focus.
By lunchtime it was stinking hot. thirty to forty degree heat, full UV index and a muggy humidity.
Eventually through some persistence and navigating cows and family mobs. We came onto what I can only describe as a full rutting spectacle.
A mob of thirty plus banteng bulls fighting over a single in-season cow.
At least ten of them were mature animals, by my count.
In amongst the dust and hooves, there were bulls locking horns and fighting. With enough intensity, that it was easy to see why so many of the bulls carried old scars and holes from previous seasons.
the younger bulls more observing the action, lightly jostling and chasing each other off in what amounted to a real life bait ball scenario.
What I mean by this is that the cow positioned in the middle had a few keen older bulls close vying for her interest. Then around them, another ring of bulls. On the exterior were a few other cows and the younger animals.
It reminded me of what occurs during the chital deer rut, just scaled up.
Similar to those stalks, its more about playing the wind, moving when you can and letting the frenzy of the rut, create an opportunity.
We closed the gap to within around fifty meters and let them do the rest of the work. One detail still sticks with me, mainly because it ended up prooving crucial in the success of this stalk.
A old banteng cow kept walking directly towards us. Whilst she acted unaware of our presence, eerily she continued seemingly staring straight at us. I couldn't work out how she had picked us out with any movement. Plus, I couldn't understand if she was so switched onto us and looking directly at us, why she hadn't bolted and blown the stalk. It wasn't until later, reviewing the footage, that we noticed she had a badly scarred, almost certainly blind left eye. That one detail was the difference maker in getting to full draw undetected.
When a distraction provided the opportunity to edge closer, James and I would move. Steadily, we got to within 25 metres of the cow and watched one particular bull circling her for a solid twenty minutes. He seemed the pick of the bulls, chasing off anything else that came close. Performing the flehmen response. That peculiar lip curl reaction after scenting a female's urine. Where the top lip rolls right back like they've caught some invisible pheromone in the air. This meant that the cow we now sat twenty meters off was in oestrous or season, which is why the rutting action had been so intense.
"I don't know what a big banteng looks like. This is the biggest, most mature bull out of thirty. If it was a chital deer, that tells me everything I need to know."
We waited for the right angle. Both of us were well within bow range, and he had no idea either of us existed. As the bull positioned the cow to breed her, he failed to notice he too was shaping perfectly for a broadside presentation. When he nudged the cow, I drew back and settled the pin.
In such open country, the bull caught the movement and peered my way, but it was too late. I released the arrow and it struck the bull through both lungs. He raced off through the mob which created a cloud of dust and hooves scattering in all directions.
Watching him go down brought with it a tonne of relief. Securing a beautiful bull on the first day and having these dangerous big game animals fall to a single arrow, peacefully was a feat in itself.
Walking up to him afterward, running a hand over that leathery textured hide, looking at the white markings and the way his horns curved into that heavy boss across the forehead. Appreciating this enormous, majestic animal in front of me, it dawned on me, that I was hunting in a special place that I'd probably never stand in again.
To have my brother and my dad there with me for the moment, made it even more memorable.
Ayden's Stalk
"He went down inside a hundred metres on a single arrow — my first bull, taken on day one, and honestly one of the cleanest, most complete hunts I've had."
James's Stalk: Cameras Dying at the Worst Possible Moment
With my "tag" as such filled, James spent the following days being genuinely selective without any perceived time pressure contributing to the hunt.
Now that we'd both calibrated what a good banteng bull actually looked like, he could sift through animals, assessing for maturity and trophy quality rather than take the first bull that presented.
The slower pace meant we started see the true beauty of Cobourg Peninsula and everything that this landscape had to offer.
Over the next three days, James took his time, working the same stretch of paperbark springs along the edge of the floodplain. We worked out the cyclic feeding and bedded pattern of the banteng. The most mature bulls tended to stay close to the small puddles of water and feed on the floodplain itself. While the cows range who fed with the bulls on the floodplain, moved further out toward the sand ridges to bed down for the middle portion of the day.
Navuigating the shadows along the spring, James spied his bull.
A mature beast, with broomed off tips to his horns and deep scarring along both sides of his neck.
Body size wise he wasnt the biggest yet his horns showcased his maturity.
The stalk was on, as james slipped off his boots and crept into range.
With the bull bedded by himself in the shade, it wasn't an overly difficult stalk to get within twenty odd metres.
With an arrow on the string, exact range measured, it became a waiting game.
We sat in place for the better part of an hour, constantly dodging the swirling breeze, when the bull finally stood.
When he did find his feet his vitals were obstructed by a tree which James had been using for cover.
The bull shifted his weight taking one small step, then another. Then, just as James began to draw, our main camera which was recording the events, overheated and died. I whistled to James, who knew something was up.
Slowly letting down from full draw, I motioned to the camera.
Fortunately the bull was contempt in the shade, so whilst I scrambled to switch cameras, James came back to full draw a second time. The arrow buried up to the fletches behind the bulls shoulder and he raced into the paper barks. After a quick fifty meter sprint, he pulled up, with the pilot-cut broad head doing its thing.
Just like that, we had successfully taken two banteng bulls with the bows.
James's Successful Stalk
The Moment Neither of Us Expected
Some of the best footage from the whole trip wasn't even the hunting. On our last morning, returning to a lagoon where we'd had success on boars the night before, we came across a dingo bitch.
For those that aren't aware, Dingoes are protected in this part of the Northern Territory and rarely, if ever, come in contact with people.
This means no predation of domestic cattle calves and thus little human - dingo conflict to manage.
I broke off from Dad and James to film her up close as she wandered through the paperbarks with her three or four young pups. They were of the age where they were eating larger meat based meals, but may have still been nursing.
As they came forwards towards me they hopped over a log and looked directly at me like I was some strange. Again, not having probably ever seen humans, my appearance must have been that of an unthreatening object. Slowly they moved around me, until within five paces, the bitch walked down wind of me and the camera and smelt the unmistakable scent of danger. She huffed and woofed a low pitch growl. Which sent the pups scattering in every direction.
Now more interested in the tall upright object she paced around me doing half circles and growling within 5 meters.
Her eyes low to the ground, her hackles along the back standing tall and erect.
It was a moment i will remember forever. In a landscape this remote, being able to share the scene with a dingo mother and her young pups. That kind of unguarded wildlife encounter is arguably rarer than the animal you came to hunt.
The Dingo Den
It wasn't the only reminder of how wild this country still is. Feral Timor ponies turned up more than once on the floodplain edges, and the birdlife was constant background noise the whole trip. Blue Winged Kookaburras, Cockatoos, Peaceful Doves and lorikeet species among them, echoing across camp most mornings before we'd even packed the truck.
Not a Pest-Control Mission
One last note about this hunt.
We got a few questions on the Twin Elements youtube channel, after the film dropped. With the main question being, why we didn't shoot more of the feral pigs we encountered throughout the trip.
The honest answer was, that we were initially solely focused on the pursuit of a mature banteng bull for each of us. With the hunt having a tight six day window and being so logistically isolated, we weren't going to burn arrows on sows and younger pigs.
Not when the priority was finding James and I a mature bull. We didn't know what to expect coming on this trip, so we wanted to give ourselves every opportunity to achieve those goals.
It is worth noting however, that its not true, that just because we didn't shoot every single pig that we see, that all of those pigs remain to destroy the environment.
Pato from Dingo Creek Hunting and his crew handle control of the pig numbers separately and effectively. There were some days coming back to camp and reconvening with Pato and his clients, where they would inform us that they had checked out a big freshwater swamp, having taken fifty feral pigs of various sizes, in a single hunt with assistance of shotguns, rifles and a buggy.
Once James and I had taken a bull each, we did shift our focus to the boars and managed to take some huge floodplain hogs. But it was never going to come at the expense of the animal we were actually there for.
Finer Details
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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 covering the Coburg Peninsula banteng hunt with Dingo Creek Hunting Safaris.
