Scrub bulls (and hunting them)

[tony m]

Tell me about them.I did so reading , seems they will go to 1800 lbs or so and sounds like originally a shorthorn beef breed . Must be good eating...a little snorty at times.I have spent alot of time around livestock and bad domestic bulls can kill you to.I don't know...fill me in .thanks

[Wm.Traynor]

Never hunted them but FWIW, I liked this story.

www.marlinowners.com/forum/australian-n ... -70-a.html

[OODAH]

I've always been told a story about when I was just a boy riding on my uncles property, they couldn't see me but they could hear me screaming over the noise of the old 2 stoke flat as a massive bull was charging behind me. After that incident the deep freezer was stocked for awhile and I stayed to the more open paddocks for awhile.

[sbd3927]

Not quite a scrub bull, but after trying a 30/30 on a 4yo bull last year, and a second shot, and a bit of travelling, two more shots.... you get the picture.. Few months later I investigated the skull, the 30/30 round was placed front on perfectly, but stopped 2" short of the brain. Likewise the other shots, not sure of the projectile, had a silver coloured tip, perhaps aluminium? Perhaps it was just the round nose of a projectile meant for tubular magazines..? Lousy penetration anyhow, made things dangerous, and far from a clean kill.
So much for the borrowed rifle, I then went and bought my .308

Which I got to use for intended purpose early yesterday morning, dropped the son of aforementioned pia. {Chewing cud... what's he doing... Thud.}
Fence jumping bull taken care of, the last jump on Monday cleared a near shoulder height fence without even touching the top wire!
Jury's still out, but the meat seems to have turned out great! Calming down for a few days and taking him early morning after a night's digesting and energy restoration, before he started pacing around the antagonistic neighbour's in heat cattle, seems to have worked out well. Also trying tenderstretch, hanging by the hipbone.

Not scrub bull's per se, but the one last year taught me, don't understimate the calibre required for a well matured bull.

[tony m]

If these bulls decend from Hereford/longhorn it wouldn't surprise me they could clear a top wire.Longhorns are pretty athletic .I have always found the 30/30 pretty anemic to, my saddle rifles have much bigger punch.The meat must be second to none .

[headspace]

Most scrub bulls are just old cattle that have been repeatedly missed in musters. They get pretty cagey and have very ordinary manners. They are usually impossible to get in a yard, and the meat is usually pretty tough. Most get shot so they don't mess up the quality cattle. All they do is fight with the herd bulls and as these are usually very valuable animals the property owner doesn't want them hurt or killed. He doesn't want the scrubbers mating with his breeders either.
I was on a station in Western Australia once where the head stockman always carried a 44magnum S&W just for the scrubbers and the odd camel.
JD

[p3seven]

Dad carried a 45 pistol. He would get the bull running the ride the horse up beside it and aim just behind the ear. The trick was to steer clear as the animal collapsed and cartweeled. The meat was fit for dingo bait. If they could be captured they were worth £5 each as hamburger beef for the USA market. 1960 prices.

[Baronvonrort]

Tell me about them.I did so reading , seems they will go to 1800 lbs or so and sounds like originally a shorthorn beef breed . Must be good eating...a little snorty at times.I have spent alot of time around livestock and bad domestic bulls can kill you to.I don't know...fill me in .thanks

It's an introduced species by those Englishmen who released a few into the wild in the Northern Territory.

You could like this vid-
www.youtube.com/watch?v=OneyeUxzL40

[Harts]

Dad carried a 45 pistol. He would get the bull running the ride the horse up beside it and aim just behind the ear.

Was your dad Clint Eastwood?

[wrenchman]

let me be the first to say your dad seven is bad ass cool that would scare the crap out of me.

[fawksel]

let me be the first to say your dad seven is bad ass cool that would scare the crap out of me.

I'll take a rifle and 50m between us too

[tony m]

Thanks for the info guys. So these bulls are cull animals.I rope the odd bull, seems sporting to shoot one horseback to me.Thanks for the video too..explains quite a bit.Here in Canada and the USA they would use some monster caliber to dispatch these, most hunters here these days are like that. The .308 is just fine for the job.Thanks again for a little insight in how you live.

[BBJ]

I have spent alot of time around livestock and bad domestic bulls can kill you to.

You could always be a Gaur farmer in Asia.

Imagine an angry one of these giving you a headbutt



Crack!

[deanp100]

Where did the idea start that scrub Bulls were a breed. They are just Bulls running wild in the scrub, hence the name. They can be anything from a jersey to a yak.

[Tiiger]

It's a reasonably enough label.

Does enough to separate them from domestic cows who have different temperament and behaviour etc. after a while in the wild.

[John]

There big smart and get really cranky If you get to close or try and get them in to holding yards lately farmers in the top end have been mustering them up to make up export weights. Generally run them down and rope them tie them to trees in modified 4x4 caged up an bash bars all over them and a truck follows picking them up and drag them in with head rope and winch.
Like any big bull got really hard heads see old farmers using old beat up .303s with old military FMJ ammo on them that definitely busts there hard heads I’m on the over kill side and use a .300 win mag on most trips north

[Blr243]

Up the cape I was bowhunting pigs by myself. Saw an old bull feeding into the wind so I walked up behind him Barefoot I got unnecessarily close but I just kept closeing the distance just the same while I had the opportunity waiting for him to turn broadside ..when he did it was impossible for me not to place arrow perfectly at 5 metres away. Good thing he stumbled and fell within five metres ...amazing what a small broadhead can do. it was a long time ago. I can’t remember if there were tees nearby but I would have been eyeing them off anxiously in case it went wrong .....I have seen them chase people .... the cape is so wild it’s just the best

[Ziege]

They can be pretty cantankerous, but at rifle ranges they're probably not even going to know you're there or care if they do see you, bow range is another thing, there's a YouTube clip of an old mate trying to bag a scrub bull with a compound bow, makes a cockfight out of his first shot and lands one in the bulls snout, then spends 10 minutes running around and around a giant termite mounds trying to not get gawed by the beast,

Why didn't the camera man intervene? Well, would you? I know personally I would be far too busy dying laughing to lend any kind of a hand haha.

[Bill]

shot a couple of NT Scrub bulls, usually anything Red and it needs to go is the attitude from Station managers.

On foot up close and when corned they get the adrenaline going like nuthin else.

[NTSOG]

G'day,

On the subject of shooting wild cattle and/or water buffalo in the old school manner I presume most readers have read "Hell West and Crooked" by the pommy Tom Cole?

If folks haven't read it, it's well worth getting a copy. They were tough men in the NT in the early part of Century 20.

Jim

[Blr243]

I second the Tom cole info , Great horsemanship ...well worth investigating ...I should make an effort and ensure it’s on my bookshelf instead of just my fathers or wherever I can’t remember ...hopefully one day there will be laws that you can be deported for not being Australian enough because you didn’t have Tom cole books at home ..... closest thing I got near to shooting buff on horseback was useing a.357 Rossi on a Honda motorcycle chasing pigs in melonhole country ....I don’t like the stop and aim technique.. heaps more fun on the move left handed while the right hand can still operates the throttle and steering ....mad days ... only twice did I fly over the handlebars and land in a heap ...too young to feel pain back then. riding through big cobwebs was always the worst because u don’t want to take hands of the handlebars there was always the fear that a big spider would run across your face before you could bring the bike to a stop

[NTSOG]

Blr243: "...too young to feel pain back then." Trouble is that it's in later years when the pain comes back to haunt us and getting out of bed in the morning is an experience!

To gallop a horse as Cole and his mates did using leg aids only through the scrub loading and firing a single shot [Martini?] rifle to hit the spine of the buffalo at point blank beggars belief.

Jim

[Blr243]

I remember prominently three things from reading Tom cole. An incident when crossing a creek on horseback a croc latched on to the rear of the horse so the quick thinking rider quickly swung a rifle round and shot it in the brain , and then was able to continue on and out of the creek........aboriginals on paperbark rafts spearing submerged crocs with barbs and ropes ....and lastly when riding right up beside galloping buff to shoot them , after a while the horses learned at the sound of the shot , without guidance from the rider to jump wide out of the way of the falling buff to prevent injury from the falling buff .......and just thought of another one , the best horses loved it so much and they knew what they were doing so the horses chased down the buff without direction .....currently I know some people who muster cattle on horseback in thick country and they reckon often before the cattle are seen the horses smell them out and if they give them a bit of slack reins the horses seek out the cattle by themselves because they know they are part of a team , finding cattle and moving them to the cattleyards