When hunts turn for the worse?

S13tsilvia

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Was reading through the hunting meme thread and one of the pics spiked a funny but serious hunting memory i thought i would share with everyone.
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A good hunting mate who has the nickname Stifler (a real ladies man :) )and I went up to hunt the mighty sambar with a some of our mates in the high country, now Stifler was a tad on the larger side, about 5'7 tall and about 130kgs built like a fridge but always claimed he was football fit roflol.

So off we went into the bush early morning with our backpacks filled with lollies, sandwiches, water and bog roll.
We did lots of K's throughout the day and it was quite warm, around 25deg C and up and down lots of big hills and the big fella didn't complain much and was keeping up without too many problems. Shane one of our other mates shot a doe about an hour and half before dark and according to the gps was about 6k from the car and it was all uphill. To this day i don't know why he shot the doe, we weren't short on meat but i think he just wanted to pull the trigger after not seeing anything all day and the tasty morsel was too much to resist.

We quickly quartered the deer, backstraps and fillets and everyone got a leg to carry out, Stifler had a front leg and away we went... not far into the hike i got asked, "any food left mate, im out?" so i chucked him my remaining mars bars.

A bit further on, "any water left mate?" and i gave him my last fluid i had.

4k to go and Stifler had fallen behind, so we prop to let him catch up and he is puffing away, talking to himself, "cmon Stiff, you can do it" over and over... we all had a laugh, gave him some shit and let him catch his breath and continued on.

By now it was dark, None of us had packed a headlamp as we had not planned on being out anywhere near this long.

Stiff has slowed right down, his self chanting has all but stopped and he is looking really rough so i grab his deer leg and his rifle off him and give him a stick to use for climbing and we are back into it.

About another half a k and he stops, says he cant go on any further , has hunger flatted and just collapses onto the ground from exhaustion. Shane, myself and Nick look at each other with a big WTF do we do now? Its dark, there is no way we can carry the fat bastard out of the bush and spending a night out isn't exactly what we had planned for with no coats etc.
So we do what any close mates do, start giving him shit and taking photos
stifler.jpg
Stiff has started shivering and going into shock and looked really rough so we light a fire and get him next to it to try and warm him up. We all have no food or water left so can't help in any other way

He has a nap for about 40 mins while we discuss options, we manage to raise one of Shanes other sons via mobile and after checking our maps we know there is a road back downhill and across a couple of k's away, it was 50/50 with distance back up to the car or out to this bottom track.

We tie up the deer legs into trees and rouse Stiff and get him upright, give him the good news its all downhill and he is just gunna have to muscle it out the fat bastard. Humour has no bounds when its one of your good mates regardless of how serious it is :)

So off we go, supporting him either side in the dark and stumbling forward in the dark with only 1 mobile screen (pre mobiles with inbuilt torches) failing to light our way. Curses aplenty at him and his elite football fitness with the promises of all you can eat chocolate were what managed to spur him downwards!! Luckily we were up that high we could see Shanes sons car lights after a while and knew the direction to head so finally staggered out of the bush at just after midnight absolutely rooted!

I have never seen a man smash down mars bars as fast as Stifler did that night once he got to the car, the packet was emptied in about a minute flat!

Half an hour later you would never have known he was completely immobile from fatigue and going into shock etc and we all had a good laugh about it after a couple of beers to rehydrate before hitting the sack.

To his credit he hiked back in the next morning with us and we retrieved all our meat and then spent the rest of the day back in the pool drinking beers!

He was lucky enough to snag a nice head the next time we went out as a reward for his efforts!

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Good story. A couple of months ago the same thing happened to me. My kid wacked a bull elk, we quartered it up and started packing it out. One of my buddies named Kevin hit the wall. Ended up puking every couple hundreds of yards the last few miles. We did lots of rest stops. It was after midnight but we made it to the truck. Kevin’s quarter was still on Kevin’s back. He was a trooper, never complained.
 
@S13tsilvia sure is a good thing you and your mates were friends with Stifler, I'd hate to see what you might have done if he weren't! :ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO:
 
Nice story. Glad you guys were safe and everything turned out alright.

Couple years ago, here in a warm Alaska Interior September I hadn't prepared for the grand undertaking we went on for our last day of our hunt. We were camped high and saw a nice Bull Alaska/Yukon Moose and started down into the valley bottom calling as we went, he was interested but not moving. It was time for the rut but it was warm out yet we wanted him to come down to the valley bottom. Needless to say we hiked down, across the valley, crossing a creek and called to no avail. So I went up alone to try to get above him. Went down wind a couple of drainages, gained the majority of the hill he was on, crossed over to above him and started working down. I never saw that bull after we got to the base of the mountain he was on. Hiking down I ran into my buddy who had his rifle up looking for the moose (another story for another day) and was shocked when he realized it was me. We descended back to the bottom, recrossed the creek, and started up the other side. I ran out of water near the bottom of the hill, foolish me didn't refill in the creek, and as we started up I didn't have on gaiters and was getting tripped up trying to climb the slope. It was an old burn that was littered with tall grass, scraggly bushes and fallen hidden logs. About 45 minutes into our climb I had fallen a few times from my pants, which were too large, getting caught and tripping me up. I started feeling really fatigued and my buddy never slowed down. He kept calling for me to hurry up and catch up. The more I tried to hurry and catch up the more i tripped dragging me down further. I ended up puking 3-4 times in the next couple hours of climbing and stripped out of the majority of my cloths sticking them in my pack. I made it to the top at camp and he had completely disassembled all his stuff and was working on getting his quad all loaded. I sat down trying to catch my breath, exhausted and over heated and he just looked at me and threw me a Gatorade and told me to 'hurry up and cool off so we can roll'. I was a little frustrated. It had been cold the previous days and I think in the end I just didn't have enough thin layers to properly strip down to appropriate clothing for how hot the day ended up being. I have improved my layering system and haven't had any more issues since and lost a few pounds. I really did hate being left behind like that though, stuck with me poorly though it was my fault for not being prepared.

I've improved my layering system, improved myself physically and am still looking for a new hunting partner due to reasons not listed in this story.
 
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I think this post has every Australian slang term I've ever seen in it, short of "bogan" and "Macca's." Ha. Great story. Glad he got back in there and got a nice stag.
Having been stationed in Kandahar with the Aussies, One slang word that is conspicuously absent would be “c**t”, which I happen to know with first hand experience the Aussies absolutely LOVE. Can almost guarantee that word was uttered that night at least a hundred times. 😂
 
Having been stationed in Kandahar with the Aussies, One slang word that is conspicuously absent would be “c**t”, which I happen to know with first hand experience the Aussies absolutely LOVE. Can almost guarantee that word was uttered that night at least a hundred times. 😂
yes lots of those choice words being thrown around haha! what made it funnier is Stifler is quite well know across the clay target shooting world, so luckily when i had reception while we were waiting for him to recover i sent a few updates out with pics.
By the time he made it back to his phone it had blown up with people all across Australia calling him a weak C**t and all sorts of other names... took him a while to live it down :)
 
Thanks for sharing, let me relive my hunt this year.
This year I took an employee hunting for the first time. He has never killed anything other than a couple ducks. So he got a gun, I helped him sight it in. Made him get in shape. He lost 23 lbs. He’s a solid guy at 225 6’2 with big solid upper body. He was running 5 miles 3 days a week before we went. My property is about as nasty as it gets. Deep canyons, rocky and shale, sometimes long shots, and lots of area to cover. I knew I was screwed. First 3 days we put on 14,13,11 miles in nasty terrain. We were cow hunting and I got him on a small group when a bull started buggeling on day 4. In fact less than 30’ with wind in our face and the bull staring at us for about 5 minutes with other cows having us pinned down. I convinced him if he didn’t get an elk he experienced something many hunters never will at that distance. We took next morning off and he wanted to try one more time. So I found them again thanks to the bull and found them bedded 373 yards on the far hillside. I had him shooting out to 350 and new he could make the shot( on a bench). He is a big athlete and performs better than average under pressure. I told him if we shoot one it’s gonna be a very long night. A long bad night I am getting too old for big pack outs on a cow. But wanting it bad for him so I got him ready. Took 45 minutes for them to stand up. Several did. He made a perfect lung shot on a 1.5 year old perfect cow and she dropped on spot. Then my dumbass decides I should shoot mine now also. Even dumber I shot the lead mega cow. That was 5pm. Took us 45 minutes to get to them going down one canyon up the other side. I forgot he had never seen a dead elk let alone gutted or quartered. So it was just me doing it all my self in pitch black. No biggie, at least he held the light. But after 4 trips packing out 2 miles each way, 3 canyons each way he hit a wall at trip 2. He finished it though. Started at 5:00pm, I climbed into bed at 6:02am.
I would do again tomorrow!!
 
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