Twin Elements Podcast · Hunting Stories

Cape York Boars: A Bowhunt At Kayuga Adventures

Cape York doesn't hunt like anywhere else in Australia and thats because its completely unlike anywhere else in Australia!
There's no climbing to a ridge at first light to glass a whole valley.
The country up there is low, undulating savannah cut through with tight, snaking creeks that bend every hundred metres or so. You're never seeing further than the next corner.

James, Dad, and I spent a week up there with Kayuga Adventures chasing tusky boars alongside Matt Moore (owner) and Brad Smith (guide) and it turned into one hell of an adventure!

In This Report

1. Hunting in a Landscape That's Fighting for Its Life
2. The Noise Problem Nobody Talks About
3. Practise Makes Perfect
4. A First Cape York Boar
5. An Old Boars Last Dry Season
6. Shade & Sandy Creeks
7. The Dinner Party
8. Last Day Adventure

Welcome to Kayuga Adventures

Hunting in a Landscape That's Fighting for Its Life

Wildlife In Peril

We deliberately timed our Cape york adventure too coincide with far north Queenslands late dry season. A strategy, betting on the fact that a lack of standing water would concentrate boars around whatever last remaining creeks and springs hadn't dried out.
It's a gamble for sure, but it proved incredibly effective on our trip.
Any rain in the days or week leading into our hunt, and that concentration of animals evaporates, and those same animals scatter back across the whole property.
We got lucky with timing, but the flip side of that gamble was confronting.

Many of these animals were genuinely fighting to survive out there, holding on day by day for a wet season that hadn't arrived yet.
That reality hit hardest when we came across a young scrub bull that had become cast.
Cast essentially translates to stuck on its side and unable to get back up.
With heavy animals such as bovine species, they may lay down in a comfortable position, but due to the sand or terrain, shit their weight slightly and can no longer effectively get their feet back under them.
This young scrub bull had bedded down in a patch of sand, under some shade.
We tried everything to get him up, but between his condition and clear signs of prolonged, exhausted struggle, we made the call to euthanise him rather than let him suffer any further.
It's not the kind of moment that makes it into hunting highlight reels, but it's an honest part of hunting country this harsh.

Cape York Locals

The Noise Problem Nobody Talks About

One of the hardest adjustments for me personally was simply how loud the country itself is.
Prolonged dry stress had caused a massive leaf dump from the big overhanging gums along every creek line. Furthermore, what would normally be quiet game trails were partially buried under a crunching, inescapable layer of leaf litter.
There was no clean, quiet foot placement to be found anywhere.

What actually worked, somewhat counterintuitively, was abandoning the classic one step glass, one step glass approach we were used to.
Instead, when we were moving past mobs of sows or immature boars we weren't targeting, walking at a steady, moderate pace, moving like just another animal shuffling through the countryside, saw us draw far less attention than the deliberate, slow stalking style that actually draws more scrutiny from animals already listening for exactly that kind of cautious movement.
With four of us in the group most days, cutting down on total noise mattered more than being painstakingly slow.

Practise Makes Perfect

The 3D Course

Before any hunting took place on this trip, one of the greatest benefits of hunting at Kayuga Adventures was utilising their incredible 3D course.
Its essentially a low fuss, yet very deliberate walk through a section of scrub, where every fifty or so meters, you come across a purposefully placed 3d wild boar target.
The black foam gets the heart racing at first, then a deliberate shot assessment is designed to take place.
Range the target, judge the angle, make sure the shots clear of debris and overhanging branches, draw back, aim, shoot.
This field course was a great confidence booster and some shots that seemed like an easy chip shot on on first glance, were deceptively difficult.
It gave us the perfect practise before the real thing and what was to come!

A First Cape York Boar

Nearly instantly, we were introduced to the true challenge that is bowhunting Cape York.
Battling the wind!
The breeze proved our biggest adversary over the next few days.
Day 1 was a mix of close calls and building frustration as we seemed to scare more bedded boars than get close enough to assess them for maturity.
Nearly every creek bank held a hog.
That was the benefit o hunting some of Australia's most remote wildnesses areas.
However, even with the ample wildlife and abundance of feral pigs close opportunities were scarce.

The best encounter started with a mistake nearly recovered.
Moving up a dense section of creek bank, I stepped forward and came face to face with a fully alert boar staring straight at me!
He'd clearly heard our approach over the last hundred metres of noisy ground. I froze rather than take another step, and after thirty or so tense seconds he simply rose from his bed, turned and ambled off around a bend.
Due to the fact that I had halted, the first available chance i had upon seeing him, the boar was seemingly unsure of what he'd actually seen or heard.

Reading a bit into his behaviour and what looked like visible signs of rut, (swollen testis) and a nearby sow potentially in season. I had Brad give a blast on his pig squealer to imitate a scuffle. We waited a minute, then crept forward once no boar emerged. Cresting the bank near where he'd disappeared behind to find nothing visible at all. Then, directly below us a slight ripple in the water under the steep creek bank. I nearly wrote it off as a bird or a cane toad until I caught the unmistakable swish of a tail.

It was a quick shot squatting so as to get under the vegetation, but the shot found its mark with a complete pass-through.
He was dead on his feet and barely covered fifteen metres before going down.
Walking up, there was no doubt that he was the boar we had partially spooked only moments earlier.
An impressive tusker, and the last boar in a long winding, yet drying stretch of water.

First Day Success

An Old Boars Last Dry Season

Day two brought overnight rain, which meant a change of strategy.
Rather than returning to areas such as yesterday's creek system, we drove the tracks until the mud behind the car turned into dry dust.
This was important, as it distinguished new ground where the previous night rain had not landed.
Meaning, that water would still be important for these boars.
When hunting over six hundred thousand acres of land, theres guaranteed to be areas that don't cop the same rain as others. With that much available country to hunt, it would be like hunting different suburbs or regions back home along the east coast.

Focusing on the dry ground, hunting only the pockets that hadn't been touched by rain. We eventually found ourselves closing in on a secluded waterhole amongst a thicket of paperbarks.
A mob of pigs were spotted with nothing shooter sized among them, so just as we were ready to move off, I spotted something out of the corner of my eye!
Another ripple in the water drew my eyes to the far bank where a couple of cattle egrets perched unusually still. On closer assessment, one of the large white birds was actually standing directly on top of an animal tucked into the mud.

That shape in the mud, turned out to be a super old boar.
The poor bugger was in poor condition, basically emaciated after a long dry season and if i had to guess, would've been luck to weigh thirty five kilos dripping wet.
The stalk was less of a hunt and more of a mercy kill.

Walking up to the expired boar, his backbone was visible and leg muscle was visibly wasted. Suggesting that it was almost certainly his last dry season regardless of whether we'd found him or not. As so often the case with these old Cape York boars, what he lacked in physical condition, he made up for entirely in the tusk department. An even, long set of pearly white ivory told the story of a genuinely old animal.

The Old Tusker

Shade & Sandy Creeks

Next stop, and we've covered the miles by car.
Again, choosing a tight sandy creek to navigate during the heat of the day.
As we walk the banks, we scan ahead hoping for any last remaining pools of water.
Every bit of shade is a likely spot for a bedded boar.

After covering a few kilometers without so much as a sighting, I was beginning to wonder if the wind was constantly racing ahead, beating us to the bedded animals before we could get a glimpse.
Then finally, some reward for effort.
Bedded flat on its side, barely visible in the soft sand lay a black boar.
He was positioned tight along a bank, amongst some timber and debris.
All that was visible of him was the top of his head and the line of his spine. Everything else obscured. Using nothing but his ear as a reference point for anatomy, I closed into fifteen yards, settled the pin, trusted the setup (an 80 pound bow, solid two-blade broadhead, and a shaft I knew wouldn't deflect off bone) and sent it.
The arrow drove straight through scapula and lungs and on entry and out near the pizzle.
Erupting from his bed, the boar covered eighty metres on a strong blood trail before going down for good.

Hunting these tight creeks makes for tricky shots.
Obscured angles, close quarters, animals that had already half detected us more often than not, but that's genuinely what Cape York demands. You don't get the luxury of picking how you find them, how they are laying, choosing perfect distances. You get what the country gives you, and you'd better trust your gear enough to take it when it comes.
Once again, this stalk showcased just how pivotal and important the earlier 3D shooting was as a primer for the following days action.

Trusting The Shot

The Dinner Party

With light fading, we made a quick dash to an area where Brad knew of a dead cow carcass.
With diminished food sources available, the protein rich carcass would certainly be attracting nearby feral pigs.
Pulling up, we heard the unmistakable sound of squealing pigs.
The sort of noises made when theres a scuffle, or pigs fighting amongst themselves.
When we laid eyes on the carcass, it was surrounded by a mob of feral pigs, mostly sows, suckers and young boars. Then, upon closer assessment, a older hooky boar had claimed the prime real-estate at the centre of the feast.

It was like a wild dinner party. Pigs moving everywhere, partially preoccupied baby squabbling for the bits of decaying flesh.
I wasted little time covering the open country and slipping to thirty yards of the boar.
By the time i got there, some of the pigs had bedded, but my target remained.
I drew back the bow slowly, took up aim and when he stretched out his front leg, let an arrow fly.
Taking out his heart, the boar raced twenty yards and much like the cow he was eating, became a corpse laying on the crunchy Cape York terrain.

Cow Carcass Boar

Last Day Adventure

My last day behind the bow proved to be stress free. With a few quality boars on the deck, we leant into covering new country and chasing adventure.
Our first stop for the day was a huge freshwater lagoon.
The type you envisage when thinking about Cape York and top end Australia.
I'm talking edges covered with flocks of whistling ducks, hordes of Magpie Geese and beautiful, picturesque aquatic vegetation such as lily bulbs.
Ive travelled Australia enough, so much so, where when I see a lagoon such as this, now my mind instantly thinks "Croc".

Sure enough, when we walked the edges and saw very little pig sigh, my mind stated to wander.
thats when I spotted a feral cattle carcass floating in the middle of the green water.
Looking through the binoculars, it was difficult to truly assess the carcass, although it appeared to me as though there were teeth marks etched into the hide.
It could have been a scrubber that waded out for a drink and got stuck, or more likely, and later proven when looking back through the footage. It was a successful hunt or a large Salt Water Crocodile.
When looking back at the footage, slightly to the right of the floating cow lay the mostly submerged head of this prehistoric ambush hunter.
Looking back its a reminder as to just how scary these animals are.
It knew for certain that we were there. It was most likely hunting us too, should we have wandered close to the edge of the swamp.
A reminder to be wise in croc country!

Salt Water Croc Encounter

Not wanting to waste the opportunity for one last walk, as the shadows lengthened, we headed for a nearby spring.
Being late in the day, there was a chance animals would already be on their feet, leaving the shade of the low lying areas and begging their own blunt for food.
We found sign everywhere. Mud splattered on dry crunchy leaves, well worn game trails, wallows, tracks.
We could smell pigs!

As had been the case for the previous days the win played its usual tricks and we saw the back end of a few boars busting out from the dense vegetation. Thats when, a black dust of hair filled the binoculars as i peered into a shady spot underneath some tussocks.
It was definitely a pig, although as i raced forwards trying to beat the wind and get into range i didn't know the size, the sex or which end was the front.
As I got to within twenty meters, nose and tail ends became obvious and I locked into where to aim.
No matter how much i glassed into the tussocks looking for tusks, testicles or other to identify boar or sow, i could not.

Not really caring either way, I drew back the bow, picked my spot and watched as an arrow disappeared into the shadows.
The feral pig erupted from its bed and raced out the other side of the vegetation.
The crunchy, dry leaf litter let us know where it travelled and taking up the blood trail we quickly knew the shot was fatal. After forty yards we came face to face with the expired pig.
A big bodied sow!
My final pig for the Cape York adventure and the end to another magical day hunting in one of Australia's most fascinating, unique and wild destinations!

Fooled By A Sow

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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 Episode 53 of the Twin Elements Podcast, part one of a three-part Cape York series with Kayuga Adventures.