Roundball Feral Donkeys!

[Ben K]

Caught-up with an old mate at the pub when I went to town, and got talking about smoke poles. He was pretty curious about them, and so I asked him if he still had a few feral donkeys in the southern end of his cattle station. He sure did, and a few days later, there we were, searching for them in the heat and dust...

Stalked to thirty-five metres of these donkeys eating green shoots in a hollow, and dropped the first one on the spot. The others trotted away a short distance, turned, and started braying at him. I stalked them to about forty-five metres and shot another one in the chest. Meanwhile the first one had arisen slightly, then collapsed again. A ball to the brain finished him. The second one was down and dead in about seventy metres. I believe the first one to have been shot near the spine. The second was shot through the lungs, and we dug the ball out on the offside, as it was bulging out. The .54" roundball is emphatic on donkeys! I was using one-hundred grains of Alliant Black MZ.





Australia has over five-million feral donkeys, and they cause a lot of ecological damage, in addition to competing with livestock for limited grazing. They also destroy Aboriginal sacred sites, by seeking shelter in caves and rubbing against the rock-art and disturbing burial remains. The donkeys (African wild ass) were used in the early pioneering days to carry goods to remote cattle stations and settlements, and when mechanised transport did them out of work, the teamsters cut their donkeys loose. They didn't realise how well they would breed, and how well they would thrive in the Outback. Feral donkeys inhabit huge percentages of the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia. There are also some in Queensland, and there were (maybe still are) some in a pocket of New South Wales. Sure, you can eat them, and dogs can, obviously. But where we are, it's really only Europeans and Asians that eat them. Most of us simply shoot them and leave them for the birds, goannas and wild dogs - because we're culling them, not hunting them for meat.

Here's a photo of some live donkeys:

 

[Zonie]

Glad to hear your helping to remove the problem.

Just don't get any wild ideas about capturing them and shipping them to Arizona.

We've got more than we know what to do with.

For a while, they were legal to cull but then thousands of soft hearted (headed?) school teachers got millions of kids from all across the Nation to send sad letters demanding protection for them. (The donkey's, not the teachers).

The soft headed (hearted?) lawmakers passed laws that forbid harassing donkey's or burro's in any way so obviously culling them is out of the question.

Same thing has happened here with the wild horses.

 

[coloradoclyde]

5 million feral donkeys? :shocked2:

I wonder how much electricity they could produce, if tethered to a turnstile generator.... :hmm:

 

[Ben K]

Hey, mate! I'm a soft-hearted school teacher myself... It makes me really sad to see the destruction these donkeys are inflicting on the environment, and to see the reduction in native wildlife where there used-to be abundance... So, I grab my rifle (muzzleloader in this case) or bow and go and do something practical about it! :thumbsup:

 

[Kapow]

You're a real bad-ass! Sorry bout that. :rotf:

 

[Britsmoothy]

You shot Eeyore :dead:

Any photo of the ball?

What did your mate recon to the front stuffer?

B.

 

[Ben K]

G'day AJ and Brit! Yep, getting onto the smashed ball photo, just cleaning it up a bit. Yeah, my mate thought it was cool, but not practical for everyday station work.

 

[Ben K]

Good weight retention. Pure lead. Bought from TotW.

 

[Ben K]

The recovered roundball above is from the second jack (the one in the first photo), the one that took just one shot through the lungs to kill.

 

[Britsmoothy]

A perfect example of how a ball is so effective!

:hatsoff:

B.

 

[wattlebuster]

Good deal :thumbsup: I had to look twice at the last three pics. It looked like some of our politicians had took a trip down under

 

[Matabele]

Great stuff Ben!!

 

[Vaino]

Australia certainly has it's share of invasive species and many were introduced intentionally?

Your post prompts the question.....where are your entrepeneurs who would utilize the meat from these animals by opening up quick food restaurants offering "jackass burgers"? Or market the meat as Mamma Mia's Italian jackass sausage? These introductions just might catch on and start a trend and the demand would really decrease the herds of jackasses and buffalo.

Evidently, judging from the ever increasing herds and huge numbers of these animals, not many people hunt these invasive species. But....if Australia were to use the American model of the demise of the buffalo and the extinction of passenger pigeons, these animals would be a rarity or non-existent in short order.

Your loads certainly do the job well and your photos are excellent.....Fred

 

[mooman76]

It's a shame they are so invasive. I for the most part don't believe in hunting except for the food value but if they are being destructive, something has to be done about it. Sounds like you had a good time anyway and you did good.

 

[Patocazador]

Glad to see a couple of dead donkeys. Good work.

As reported above, our "save the everything" groups got the "Wild Horse Act" passed. There are no wild horses or donkeys in the US just feral ones. The "wild" horses here were brought over on ships by the Spanish. As you stated, they are very destructive but are untouchables. Shame on the Feds and the do-gooders!

 

[Kapow]

We've got a few million wild horses too. We call them brumbies. They get the same treatment as all vermin. Great pig bait. There are no natural predators here. Only dingo dogs which are too light to bring down larger animals. No point getting sentimental about them.

 

[Spikebuck]

Nice pictures.

Always interesting to hear about hunting in other countries and the issues of invasive species, etc. Even if a "human" isn't eating them, nothing ever goes to waste in nature.

 

[Mercian]

There's an old saying over here, "The two rarest things in the World are a contented farmer and a dead Donkey." No offence to farmers intended.

 

[tenngun]

I've eaten horse , and it was good. During much of the ice age large areas of Europe seemed to think horse was the go to thing to hunt, with other big game animals taking a back seat. Burritos of corse ment little burros, and have been told by many Basque farmers that burro made the best burritos. I ate more then one burrito when doing farm labor growing up in rural New Mexico, and may have eaten burro. You don't ask a farm wife what's in the dinner she's serving.

 

[Vaino]

Seeing Australia is over run w/ large sized invasive species, I think an introduction of one more invasive species would do some good....African lions. All of the large Australian invasive species are "natural prey" for lions and as the lions flourish, down go the numbers of wild horses, buffalo and onagers {donkeys}.

Of course once the above large, invasive species are greatly reduced, the cattle ranchers would have to erect sturdy, very high fences to protect their cattle from the "solution" to the large, invasive species problem and would also have to maintain these expensive fences.

The solution to the over abundance of lions would be to introduce luxury safaris that would surpass the African safaris.....which would attract very rich "hunters". A picture of a "hunter" w/ his lion would satisfy his friends because who's to say it wasn't Africa....seeing the landscape would look "foreign" to his friends?

Again....where are your entrepeneurs?....Fred












}