About Your Guides
Chris
Well what can I say? I am crazy about sambar and deer hunting. I have spent the last 7yrs or more dedicating my spare time and not so spare time to the study of deer especially sambar, from 2-3 times a week to a minimum of once a month.
Sambar deer have fascinated me since the first time I hunted them right up until now. Growing up in rural Victoria I was an avid outdoorsman, fishing, trapping and shooting. However it wasn’t until I finally went deer hunting that I got the deer hunting bug, from then on I was obsessive compulsive to learn more.
I have graduated myself and seen the transitions as a stalker with a rifle to a stalker with a camera/video to a stalker who loves to teach people and show people the ways and habits of the wild sambar. I love challenges: taking a sambar with a longbow after 16 months of persistence, photographing large stags without the urge to shoot, even building my own rifles and wildcat cartridge especially for sambar deer.
To sum up, sambar hunting is impossible, however the rewards of being able to hunt them is priceless, whether you harvest one or not. Sambar are elusive to the point of invisible, silent to the point of being ghosts and as wary as any animal that has been the prey of tigers for millennia. They did not just become the most challenging game species of the South Pacific, there are!
So we’d love to get you out in the forests and bush with us so you can experience what we sometimes take for granted. I’ll do my best so you have a great time and learn, the reward for me will be to see your smile after tasting success. There is not much more I can say until we are sitting in the car talking on our way to the hunt…….
Anthony
Growing up in a rural environment saw me hunting rabbits and foxes from a very early age, on and around our family property. Even though I was a keen footballer and cricketer, the desire to hunt was always present and still hasn’t left me. My passion for playing football and cricket however has left, which led to me pursuing deer hunting; nearly to the point of being fanatical!
With stories of deer being sighted and successfully hunted locally, my curiosity grew and as soon as I could drive I started looking for them, this deer being sambar, Cervus unicolor. After many outings into sambar country usually on my own; back then I didn’t even know a sambar hunter, I still had not seen a deer. That was until one day hunting through a typical wattle and bracken filled gully, I flushed a sambar calf from cover and successfully dispatched it. I was over the moon, 19 years old and I had my first deer. Although only a calf, I had it mounted, and proudly hands on my trophy room wall still today, almost 20 years on.
The next 6-7 years I did some very hard yards and learnt a tremendous amount about my quarry, though I hadn’t shot another sambar, I had seen quite a few, but one miss was as close as I got. Sambar are renowned as being one of the hardest deer species in the world to hunt and compared to the many game animals I have hunted in the South Pacific, I can’t say that this is far from the truth!
After a bad leg injury playing football, I decided to give up football and focus my efforts into becoming a successful sambar hunter. At least once a week over the next 10 years I would go hunting, more often then not 2-3 times per week. During this time I have seen hundreds of sambar. Shot good stags, got video footage, helped friends and others become successful and maintained my freezer with venison.
This is where Reedy Safaris comes into the equation. Chris and I are there to help fast track you into becoming successful on sambar; “so you don’t have to stumble around for years trying” like I did. I know what it feels like and I’d like to help you avoid the frustration. With nearly 20 years of sambar stalking between us, we will help you fulfill your goals and learn what took us years, in days. Don’t let the opportunity to pass you by, at least this way you’ll know a few sambar hunters!
See you at Reedy Safaris,
Anthony