I was trying to keep this on the down-low

[Nic Barca]

Last weekend I went out again on the Morita Camp trail out to the Wailuku River, about a three mile treck. Pig sign galore! I had set out with my heart set on getting a pig for the freezer, so this was great. Haven't got one in some time now, probably since me and Doc last went. On the way in I realized I had forgotten a vital piece of equipment, my compass. I would have to stick to the trail and close to the river, a plan I did not stick to in the long run. Then I got the bejeezes scared out of me when I walked up on some skinny black mass on the trail which turned out to be somebody's lost hunting dog. At first, she laid on her back belly up after causing my heart to skip a beat. She sat up giving me puppy dog eyes. "Hey little girl, are you lost?" I slowly go to put my hand on the top of her head but as soon as my hand gets to within biting distance, she weirded out and began growling at me. I slowly retreat my hand from in front of her face. Then for the next mile, she's running down the trail in front of me growling and barking. Every time she gets out of view, she waits for me and then barks at me some more. It was frustrating. Eventually I got in front and while eating lunch she came up behind me again on the trail. I yelled at her and that was the last I seen of her. …Stupid dog.

After I made it to the river, I walked up a couple hundred yards before going into the forest on the other side and after hiking up a long ways I came across the first animal of the day, a small cow feeding in the reeds. I figured at surely it would smell me soon because the air was moving slowly in that direction. It was a small cow but who can say a 400 pound animal is small? Eventually it did notice the smell, lifted its head for a moment and booked it, for some reason running in the upwind direction. Lesson learned: cows probably have a poor sense of smell. Within a minute, two more about the same size spooked about 30 yards to my right. I kept walking. Fresh pig sign was everywhere. Why am I not seeing any pigs????

An hour later, I felt I was probably reaching close to the pastures atop the forest reserve. I was wrong though because it turned out I was only about as high as me and doc walked that other time. But I was in a very open area and spotted two head of cattle feeding about 60 to 80 yards off. One looked humongous! The other was either a cow or younger bull. Fearing they might wind me, I decided to take the long shot. I aimed high and behind the shoulder fearing bone might stop the bullet as had happened with the 12 gauge. It was all freehand. BOOM! Nothing moved. The big bull just stood there for a moment. Then they both started stampeding in my direction. He stopped across the gully just 30 yards away. I aimed again for about the same place. BOOM! That time he spun around and booked it with the other following him. After 30 yards, he stopped and I heard some coughing. A minute later a crash was heart followed by more coughing and another crash. Then all was silent. Did I get him? Is he down or did he keep running? Where did I hit him? Did I miss the first shot?

When I did pick up the blood trail I found a sparse blood trail which didn't look like lung blood. I tracked him very slowly with the idea in my head that if he's just wounded, he might be dangerous and I had better spot him before he spots me. Funny thing though was that I didn't see him until he was 10 feet away lying dead on a slope behind a fallen log. And boy was he huge. I'm not going to lie to you all; a lot of meat was wasted. I could only pack out the weight equal to about one of his back legs. He looked to be over 1000 pounds and the horns ...well, the horns were something like a yard across. I tried whacking them off with the machete but that didn't work. So I figured I would blast one off for a souvenir and that's exactly what I did, I used a third bullet of the day to loosen a horn from the skull. After taking backstraps, what I could reach from the tenderloins and a couple chunks from the back leg, I was weighed down with at least 40 pounds of meat. I probably could have taken 20 pounds more but if I did, I might not be here writing this.

Remember how I was saying there were some huge tracks in there, some 6 or 7 inches wide? Well this was one of them. On the way out, I stepped on a log and had one of those falls where your right food slide left and kicks out your other leg. So I tried to do a jump like I usually do in order to recover in mid air much like a cat would. Well, in this case I was not a cat and didn't even dome close to landing on my feet. I basically came crashing down with my weight plus 50 pound more right onto my hip. I even tried to collect some of the weight on my right arm which was holding my gun but my momentum with the pack didn't allow that arm to do much good and I stuck the barrel about 4 inches into the mud. A moment later I banged my knee on something hard followed by cursing. Then it rained on me. I got out to the truck before it got dark. For the record, I have been sleeping on my left side ever since because my right is bruised (and hopefully only bruised) from the fall.

Here's the photos:
This first one is of the very very dense bush before you come to the dense bush which we consider "open forest." Visibility is about 15 feet here. This place is a more recent lava flow of a'a lava.

Here's my Rhinoceros. There's some big critters deep in the forests.

And another

This shows how bulky he was in the rump.

This is the outline cut and the first bullet I came across. I believe this to be the first shot. I dissected the lungs and found one shot was far back and high and had just caught the back tips of both lungs. The second bullet, I couldn't find. (?????) But the hole thought the center of his lungs was obvious. Perhaps it had struck a rib and was still in the chest cavity somewhere.

My butchering job.

And after I was done, I got curious as to where I had hit him, so after a half hour of trying, I was finally able to roll him over. It's a bit gory on the lower end. I was surprised how high his lungs were. The front shot went through the cartilage up top the shoulder blade and through the center of both lungs.

 

[Fishspanker]

Is that thing wild? that's cool. look at all that beef.

 

[wyemjohnson]

That be a monster all right! well done!

 

[Speckmisser]

It's depredation, Nic...don't worry about what you couldn't carry out. If you don't kill it now, it's likely the sharpshooters will do it later. It's one heck of an animal, and that's a fact! You'll eat well on what you did pack out.

Now if that were a CO elk or a nice mule deer, I'd be all on your case about leaving all that prime meat.

 

[CAjackrabbitWCP]

Sweet!

My dream hunt is to get one of those(wild like yours') with the bow.

 

[larrysogla]

Congratulations,
That is one huge, mature bull. That is a steer. Probably weighing over 1,500 lbs. Now, I tried to find here at JHO the post regarding the hunter that trained a Billy Goat Pack Train, but I could not find anymore the post. It is still here at JHO but I have to do more intensive search. That would be a perfect Jungle Pack Train. What with the lush Hawaiian jungle with lush jungle plants to feed the Billy Goats. 'Nuff said.

 

[Nic Barca]

Larry, I looked into pack goats when I was younger and hunting the Na'pali coast for goats and pigs but I basically concluded that it would all be fore waste the first hunting dogs you came across. Oh and besides, I wouldn't have anywhere to keep them. A mule would be ideal.

Speckmisser, that's exactly the way I see it about the wild cows and mainland game.

I think it's about time I go home and eat some tenderloin.

 

[DEERSLAM]

Congrats on a big ol' bull

Lots of good eatin there

 

[larrysogla]

Nic,
I will be praying for your quick recovery and complete healing. God Bless.

 

[qaz]

The easiest way to move cattle is on the hoof. I have used my dog to move many an angery semi-wild bull and would prefer that to shooting it, then packing meat out! One or two dogs could pull double duty for you on hogs and cattle.

 

[THE ROMAN ARCHER]

congrats Nic Barca on your wild cow kill and good hunting adventure story!

........tra

 

[richardoutwest]

That's a TON of work, Congrats!

 

[beastslayer]

I'm just plain envious.

Congrats.

 

[jindydiver]

Hell of a big freezer stuffer

Good on you for making the effort to get the meat before the gov' wastes them

 

[beastslayer]

It will be interesting how the horns will evolve eventually. The thick jungle will sweep the horns to points backwards like those Asian wild cattle and buffalos.

 

[XDHUNTER]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (beastslayer @ Apr 13 2007, 02:41 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>

It will be interesting how the horns will evolve eventually. The thick jungle will sweep the horns to points backwards like those Asian wild cattle and buffalos.[/b]

It will be ugly.

Congrats,nice picture and great story.

lot's of burger.

 

[Nic Barca]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (jindydiver @ Apr 13 2007, 11:27 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>

Hell of a big freezer stuffer

Good on you for making the effort to get the meat before the gov' wastes them [/b]

That would in fact be interesting but I doubt any evolution will ocuur. They are not isolated from pasture cattle and even though they have been wild for 200 years, chances are more and more likely that they will be wiped out completely within the next 50 years, if not some time within the next ten. They sure do scrape a lot of trees with those horns. You see bark stripped off Olapa trees all over the place. I'm not sure if they are eating the stripped bark, or if it's just a habit that clears forest cover allowing more light to grow grass.

qaz, I really wish somebody could do something like that here. But there would be a lot of obsticles. First, they are dangerous if they see you, second, visibility is usually 30 yards or less, , the area is rolling forested hills on a steady downhill slope in stony muck, and then there is a dense rocky area with visibility under 15 feet and almost too thick to move located between the truck and the river. The rocks alone detur any cattle from passing through that area. That area is in the upper picture. I think the cattle ranchers tried to round up some of them before the season started but had little success.

 

[beastslayer]

Nic,

That's interesting. But with Doc's bull with a shorter horn, don't you think they have already evolved from their Texas longhorn forebears? Even the one in the picture has a smaller horns than the typical longhorn bull.

Where will the danger of eradication come from? I don't think it will be economical for the ranchers to shoot them and pack off the meat. And as you say, and I would agree, rounding them up is out of the question.

Although I would not see this in my lifetime, I would wish to envision a fully evolved wild cattle. That's just going back to their origin. A wild cattle, like that in Thailand, is a beautiful and majestic animal.

 

[EvBouret]

I dont think we'll have to worry about the cows evolving back to their ancient relatives...Nic'll have the problem completely taken care of by the time he's out of college there.

 

[Nic Barca]

Beastslayer

...Well, the situation here is that native ecosystems are in decline, being replaced by alien invasive plants and animals. The forests and plants that live in them are not evolved to deal with herbivorous large mammals, trampling, or pig rootings. The worst of the invasive plants have become noxious weeds which benefit from the disturbances caused by feral ungulates. So keeping ungulates at a minimal is crucial to preserving the last native forests. So, if you key in the history of cattle in Hawaii, and I do not know whether they are texas longhorns or not, but much of the deforestation of the past was due to cattle, and much of the noxious weed forests that exist today were a result of reforestation of the overgrazed lands by invasive plant species. But the DLNR is going to be increasingly presured by environmental groups to remove the cattle and if they are in fact going to remove them, they are going to do it in one fell swoop. This could happen in one year, or it could happen in ten years, or whenever. It will happen as soon as the DLNR gives the go-a-head. The forests may seem like they are healthy but they are on the path to becoming grasslands. The cows are tearing down the mid canopy trees and preventing regeneration of the ohia and koa trees that make up the upper canopy. Hapu'u tree ferns within reach are being munched on by the cattle. Other hapu'u tree ferns are being fell by pigs which eat the inner core. Those ferns only grow an inch per year so the pigs and cattle are felling 100 year old plants much faster than they can regrow. I'm going to leave out "nurse logs" just to keep this more simple than it is. The understory was the first to go and was likely thick with ferns and pepperomia, and other understory plants. Now it consists of leaves, mud, a few ferns and reeds where moist enough. The humus layer is erodeing away and siltation is increasing in streams. The floods are muddy and water infiltration declines while surface runoff increases. Stream quality suffers. Grass is starting to grow because of the increase in light due to mid canopy thinning. Once these grasses get established, they will block all regeneration of native plants. Eventually the remaining large canopy trees will die off and all that remains would be a pasture, which is on the path to being taken over by gorse, a weed which forms inpenetrably dense thorny thickets. Therefore we wouldn't even be able to go to these grasslands. ...so naturally, as much as we like to hunt them, it would be best to kill all the cows and fast.

I just read one article that said that Captain Vancouver presented five black longhorn cattle to King Kamehameha. I don't know how true that is but if it is true, then the cattle we are hunting may not be of the same lineage of the origional cattle. I heard of one large bull being caught near the volcano vents near Kilauea Caldera that was black. Perhaps that one was a decendant but these aren't. Perhaps they are more recent feral cattle from the pastures up top. It is not dificult for cattle to become feral in Hawaii. All that is required is a hole in a fence and the next generation is considered feral and are wild as can be.

I'm not even 100% sure docs bull was a bull. It might have been a cow. ...unless doc saw his thingy. I forgot to look. Actually, it probably was a young bull. If it was a cow, I would have saw her thingy. But perhaps you would see something like that in your lifetime. Evolution of animals seems to happen very fast when they are introduced into completely different ecosystems than they came from. Just look at the iguanas in the south pacific. Those were likely brought from south america long ago by ancient voyagers, but not THAT long ago, and now they look very different. Ah, but at the same time, they only LOOK different. Same with the cows. But there are a bunch of other reasons why the horns wouldn't get short and angle back, mainly because in the presence of cows, the forests are not thick; they become thinned out.