Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Sambar Deer?

Anybody know anything about em? Ever hunted em? What tactics?

Sambar deer are incorrectly assumed to be a flat land smwamp country deer because of the documentaries made in India where they originate.

The huge herds in those doc's that are stalked around the edges by tigers are not representative of these deer when they are relocated to deep forest country or mountainous terrain.

In Oz, these are the most highly prized animal on the continent and the only animal in the world where a doe is still a trophy because of the extreme difficulty in bagging one.

I have hunted several species of deer and although tend to be selective in what I take, have a 100% failure rate on sambar even though I hunted them over about 12 years.

It is common for the most esperienced hunters with decades of stalking experience behind them take many years before taking their first sambar.

They are also an extremely tough animal, much like the Nilgai, also from India, where the minimum cartridge recommendation may be a .30/06 but you will seldom see anything samaller than .338 with the .375 probably the most popular, followed by the .458, 9.3x62 and the new wildcat, the .35 Sambar which is the .300 WSM necked up. If well shot, they will run and hide and often be lost even with complete penetration.

A free range sambar is probably the most difficut deer species in the world to succeed at. When I was on the scoring committee for SCI downunder, whenever we got an application from an overseas hunter who was claiming to have gotten off a plane, gone into the bush and clocked a trophy stag, we all knew it was likely a BS claim and they largely proved to be animals with a chain on their leg, (aussie expression)with the application rejected.

No-one is that good and you cannot hope to be successful on a first hunt by using skill. It can only be a fluke.

On my first hunt, I now know I had the chance to take a stag. I was hunting mountain country with thick timber canopy and understory made up of dog bush, ferns and scrub.

I was high on the hill face leaning on a tree and looking down into the valley towards the river flats below. It ws raining quite hard so there was no point in moving about and slipping and falling, so I hunted using my eyes.

About 200 yards below me was an old fern which open like an umbrella providing a measure of shelter. The hood was perhaps 10 feet above ground for I noticed a large brown animal underneath seeking shelter, but I could not see the head as it was lowered to permit the rain to fall over it.

The heavy body of a sambar looks similar to a domestic cow as they also have shorter legs than an elk. I raised my .416 Weatherby housed in a firbermark stock and strained through the Leupold to see antler. I could not.

I was told cows in the area as some farmers had grazing leasses in this area of national park, so I refrained from taking the shot until I could Identify the animal even though the chest and shoulder were presented as a side on shot. To brake concentration, I looked away on several occasions looking back to see if there was a change in stance but he never moved.

At a point maybe 10 minutes after first contact, I looked back and he was gone. When I relayed my story to the other hunters in my group, they informed me that the cows in the ares were all black and white colored. It was indeed a samber and I had blown it. I heard this stag was shot about a week later in the same valley by a local hunter using a .300 Winchester (a cartridge with a deplorable reputation on sambar)and lost. Teh antlers wer e claimed to be around 26-28 inches which is a big animal. A 30 inch head is the holy grail.

Over the next dozen years, I hunted them many times up to a week at a time. I walked past them and they smashed down trees and brush in their escape, but I never saw them. I saw hoof prints on top on my boot marks where we overlapped the same places within minutes of each other, Saw flashes of color and listned to the tree busting up as they escaped after I had stalked past their hidden forms. You get the picture.

Now, some facts:

The will hide in bush and watch you go past.
The will lay in a river with their notrils exposed to hide from you.
They obviously swimm with proficiency.
They tend to be solo or travel in very small groups contrary to the large numbers you see on the doc's
They can jump fences as well as any whitetail
They love thick timber country and will graze in the low lands at night and move up to the higher elevations to catch the rising scents.

The best way to hunt them I( according to those w3ho know)is to stop stalking them as you emulate a tiger when you do that and inadvertently alert these deer to your presence. You will se more animals when you walk along giving up on a hunt and walking abck to camp which indicated that they are curious about the abnormal noise you are making.

Many hunters report the feeling of being watched as they take a pee or are even skinning a carcass, to find a stag standing right there in the open looking intently at them. Faster than you can curse, they are gone.

I encourage any hunter to try for sambar and enjoy the thril of being outsmarted. Just don't brag too loudly if you stumble onto one on the first hunt. A great many highly experienced hunters fail. I did, but I hunted the mighty sambar and I have the memories.

JW

A point not made yet is that Aussies are not tree stand hunters. They are stalkers. If you ever saw a tree stand in the bush, you would automatically assume it was a poacher, or a sleezeback of some sort. There is an incredible ethics applied to deer hunting there. A hunter who is ever caught spotlighting a deer is literally despised and denigrated by the hunting community.

If I ever lived in Australia again, it would be in sambar country. The ultimate challenge.


JW