Twin Elements Podcast · Hunting Stories
The Honey Hole: A Buffalo & Boar Double + a Croc Crossing We Shouldn't Have Made
Some of the best hunts happen when you've got almost no time to spare. After a stretch of full-time veterinary work in the Northern Territory — pregnancy testing a thousand cows a day, driving station to station, barely picking up the bow — I had a handful of days lined up with James on a new property between Darwin and Katherine, chasing water buffalo and feral pigs. We'd never hunted the block before. Everything that mattered happened in a single afternoon.
On Territory Time
Driving thousands of kilometers each week for work is demanding, yet it has its perks when you can witness some of the Territories sensational scenery and wildlife.
No shortcuts, gear selection is paramount when taking on a hunt of this magnitude.
In This Report
- Reading the Dry Season From a Map
- Finding the Honey Hole
- A Crossing We Shouldn't Have Made
- Twelve Yards, Double Lungs
- A Boar Fight, A Hundred Metres Away
Reading the Dry Season From a Map
On X Scouting
On X and other offline digital mapping services mean that you can have a location sorted, before your boots ever hit the ground.
By marking natural springs and likely water sources, we fast tracked success, highlighting likely spots for game to concentrate during the dry season.
Going in blind on a property this size meant leaning hard on e-scouting before we ever set foot on the ground. The strategy was simple in theory: mark the big rivers and creeks that would have flooded during the wet, then look for the smaller, isolated green pockets further out. The low lying spots that stay lush and wet long after everything around them has dried to red earth and open woodland. Water is life up here, and by winter, animals are forced away from the abundance of the wet season into these last few concentrated refuges.
We spent the morning working our way along a network of creeks and billabongs, seeing plenty of buffalo cows, calves, and young bulls, but nothing worth committing to. That absence was itself useful information — if a mature bull wasn't with any of these smaller mobs, he was likely somewhere quieter, further from pressure. On the offline maps, one particular thicket stood out: a patch of deep green roughly six kilometres away in a straight line, with no visible water at all, just a stark colour contrast against the surrounding dry country. We committed to the walk, hunting our way toward it rather than beelining, in case something worth pursuing turned up along the route.
Finding the Honey Hole
As we closed the last few kilometres, the sign got noticeably fresher — matted hair on trees, wet mud, urine still damp enough to smell. We arrived early afternoon, prime time for animals to be up and cooling off.
Our waypoint had led us to a genuine oasis.
Within the lagoon a mob of ten odd buffalo were wallowing and swimming in the water. Further down the other corner, feral pigs were rooting up along the edge behind them. It was exactly the payoff that six extra kilometres of walking was betting on.
Working along the edge of a long lagoon leading into the paperbark thicket, with pigs feeding as close as five metres away, James spotted him first — a big, solid, clearly mature bull wallowing on the far bank, dark-coated and heavy-bodied in a way that made his horns look almost smaller than they actually were. Cows and calves lose condition fast in the dry season from lactation demands, turning pale and ribby. A fat, dark animal such as this one stands out as a bull from across a lagoon for exactly that reason.
From the Field
A Crossing We Shouldn't Have Made
Here's the part of the story I'd tell any listener not to repeat.
Be croc wise! Treat any water in Australia's top end as off limits.
The bull was feeding away from us on the far side of a lagoon which spanned fifty to seventy metres wide. In haste and excited to close the gap, rather than take the long loop fully around, which risked losing him in paperbark thick enough to swallow him whole after twenty steps. James and I crossed the water directly. We told ourselves the water was unusually clear, that a game trail had pushed the reeds flat, that pigs were already swimming in there so surely no saltwater crocodile inhabited it.
"None of that reasoning holds up, and we knew it at the time — there's a moment in the footage where I look back at James before stepping in, and the look on both our faces says exactly what it should."
We got across safely. That doesn't make it the right call, and it's not one I'd repeat or recommend to anyone.
Twelve Yards, Double Lungs
Once across, we quickly cut the distance to under one hundred and fifty metres. Then worked in more slowly, guided more by sound of the feeding bull than a direct line of sight through the thick paperbark. The crack of horns against timber telling us roughly where he was before we ever laid eyes on him again. He fed toward us on a split game trail, walking in front-on with his head down the whole approach. He looked like a bulldozer, idling fowards, closer and closer. Eventually after ten or so minutes he stumbled into range at twelve yards. Rather than wait for a perfect shot to present under ten yards. He continued front on, a riskier shot angle on a beast of this size. However at this range, I trusted my knowledge of anatomy and gear choice. I drew as he angled slightly quartering on / broadside and sent the arrow through both lungs.
I watched as the arrow struck the bull hard, almost turning him in the direction the arrow was travelling. Crystal clear, I recall seeing the 150grain ZOT, by Kayuga Broadheads sitting out the offside of the bull. Held in place only by the fletching on the far (entry) side.
For a split second time had stood still, and then he sprung into action. Thankfully, he crashed off in a wide arc, knocking down timber the way only a buffalo can, and went down around sixty metres out. We gave it ten to twenty minutes before following the blood trail — more because we were still processing what had just happened than out of necessity.
The Bull
A Boar Fight, A Hundred Metres Away
Just as we confirmed the bull down, we realised we'd been hearing something else the whole time: pigs, fighting, close by. Following the sound rather than sight through darkening, waist-deep paperbark swamp, we tracked the changing pitch of the noise. High-pitched squeals from younger pigs getting bullied off, giving way to the low, chuckling grunts of two evenly matched mature boars actually locked in combat over a sow. At twenty-five metres, in fading light, I picked out the two rivals. A jet black boar and an equally sized ginger and black boar posturing side by side.
Tusks and shoulders jostled as the two smashed into one another, ejecting foam from around their mouths. As the ginger boar broke off to flee, I drew instinctively and released. In the footage, you can see the arrow clip a sapling I hadn't noticed. The branch was as thick as a finger, cutting it clean in half before continuing on. We found the arrow afterward buried in water and swamp, with no blood on it at all, which had me convinced for a moment I'd missed clean. Twenty steps into the tracking job, the first drop of blood proved otherwise. Ten more steps and we found him down, forty metres from where we'd shot, mid-stride when he expired. A testament to just how much a solid two-blade broadhead and a well-built shaft can survive and still finish the job.
The Boar
We ended up dragging the ninety-kilo boar over to the buffalo rather than the other way round — considerably less effort!
Between a genuinely careless water crossing, a twelve-yard buffalo encounter, and a boar fight resolving barely a hundred metres from where the bull went down, it's the kind of afternoon that doesn't come around often, especially on ground we were hunting completely blind.
Good preparation and a decent read on the country got us to the "honey hole". Everything after that was equal parts good fortune and a decision I still wouldn't recommend anyone else make.
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 breaking down "The Honey Hole," part one of a six-part Northern Territory film series.
