FEATURE Ken Slee

According to ADA stalwart Ken Slee, new stalkers will find greater success on sambar once they get to like being in the bush.

Despite growing up in a household and with friends that were keen on outdoor pursuits such as rabbit, duck and fox shooting, and trout and redfin fishing, getting involved in sambar hunting was a whole different ball-game.

I still remember those first few tentative weekend trips away with my brother and a mate. Arthur Bentley’s book An Introduction to the Deer of Australia had only recently been published. My brother had a copy, and we were keen to get out there and shoot a few of these rare and mysterious beasts.

Arthur’s book had mentioned places where sambar could, at the time, be found. Names such as Gembrook, Tonimbuk, Labertouche, Walhalla, Acheron and Big River. Naturally, we visited each of these places in turn in search of animals … or even sign of one. What a shock that was! Almost endless steep mountain forest with undergrowth so dense that to step off a track you had to part it with both hands! And rain! It never seemed to stop, so that pushing through the scrub very quickly had you wet and shivering! It was a shock to a bunch of young blokes used to dry, lowland forest.

Looking back, we spent most of our time driving roads, overwhelmed by the challenges posed by the country. Meeting a hound crew on the side of the road or trying to raise the subject of deer in a bush pub were also unhelpful. One was met with stony silence, the other with hostility to all hunters.

We did venture into the bush a few times but it was usually tentative and short-lived. However, one foray into a creek somewhere near where the Thomson Dam is now resulted in a fleeting glimpse of a dingo, and not long after a set of fresh deer tracks on a sandbar next to the creek. Exploring a nearby abandoned goldmine near the deer tracks rounded out what we considered at the time to be a very successful weekend away.

Later, we realised that the high-rainfall country and its dense forest cover was not really stalking country and was more suited to hunting with hounds. Searching further afield led us to the Macalister Valley and its lower rainfall and more open forest. Here you could often see hundreds of metres and had a good chance of seeing a sambar before it saw or heard you coming.

Success eventually came, and we took the odd animal, including a stag. Mentally too, we had started to come to grips with the country, learning that we could spend all day hunting among swift flowing streams, steep faces and tall mountains, and so long as you had the right clothing, having wet feet and legs was neither here nor there. Moreover, finding deer sign became the norm and not something to be amazed by. Even sighting deer became a relatively common experience. We got to the stage of seeing an animal every few trips (very different to recent times). And, most significantly, we were enjoying ourselves and the challenge of the hunt.

It was around this time, the early to mid-1970s, that the stalking of sambar came into its own. Previously, scent-trailing hounds or the spotlight had been the ‘gold standard’ for taking an animal. The sambar colonising drier country further east in Victoria made stalking that much more productive.

Then around 1980, Len Bingham was the guest speaker at a meeting of the recently formed East Gippsland Branch of the ADA. Len was recognised at the time as one of the most accomplished sambar stalkers, having previously hunted for many years over the hounds to build his knowledge of the deer and their ways. The Bairnsdale Elderly Citizens Hall was packed to the rafters with keen young hunters, some with a few deer under their belt but many other keen ‘would-be’ sambar slayers.

Len, in starting his presentation, made a profound remark, that success in sambar hunting came from ‘Getting to like the bush’. I am unsure how many others in that long-ago audience picked up on this sage advice, but to me it was a revelation. It encapsulated exactly the path that my hunting mates and I had been on for the previous fifteen or so years.

We had gone from being overwhelmed by the country and the quarry to feeling at home in the bush and enjoying almost every minute that we spent there, whether we saw deer or not. Along the way we had learned a lot about the deer and the ways of the forest.

Len had an attentive audience that night and I am sure that he imparted many other pearls of wisdom that were helpful to an inexperienced sambar stalker, but no others stuck in my memory.

If you are young and aspiring to take up sambar hunting by stalking, an absolute requirement is to take Len Bingham’s advice about ‘Getting to like the bush’ as a prerequisite to hunting success. Start with easy first expeditions into more open country. Build your confidence in a location, practice safely crossing rivers and dealing with steep and difficult country and lousy weather, and learn everything you can about the deer and the bush that they live in. Above all, make sure that you are out there to have a good time, and to learn about and start to appreciate the bush, its beauty and its challenges. Success on sambar will inevitably follow!