Buffalo Shooting

Conventional pastoral enterprises on the coastal plains quickly failed, but one industry did successfully emerge.

Buffalo shooting must have been one of Australia’s most colourful land uses. Until about two decades ago wild buffalo abounded on the coastal plains and throughout the Litchfield Shire. The buffalo were always especially evident on the plains on the western side of the Adelaide River, around Beatrice Hill.

The animals were the descendants of Asian water buffalo which were brought here in the 1820s, to the British military outposts on the far north coasts. When these outposts were abandoned the buffalo were left to run wild. They spread and multiplied very quickly. They found ideal habitats in the low lying coastal plains and the adjacent ridges.

In the 1870s a few brave men started shooting the buffalo for their hides, which were used overseas to make heavy duty leather, mainly for industrial belting and upholstery.

The first shooters stalked and shot the buffalo on foot, but this was dangerous and inefficient. Paddy Cahill, who had come to the Territory as a drover with Nat Buchanan, is credited with introducing the horseback shooting technique which revolutionised the industry.

Cahill refined the Queensland "scrub dashing" techniques to gallop alongside a fleeing buffalo. Carbines or cut down rifles were used, held and fired one handed.
When the rider was alongside the buffalo a shot would be fired into the animal's spine, just behind the shoulders.

The shooters had found that half a dozen shots placed elsewhere might not stop the buffalo, and a wounded beast was likely to stop and charge the nearest man or horse. While the shooter was dealing with the wounded animal, the rest of the mob would have galloped away to escape.

A well placed spine shot, which had to be fired from above and at close range, would cripple the buffalo, and drop it on the spot. The shooter’s horse was trained to swerve just as the shot was fired, to avoid the falling buffalo. The shooter could then gallop on after his next target.

The crippled but still living buffalo might be left for many hours, until skinners, usually Aborigines, arrived to finish it off and take its hide. This way the carcass was warm and manageable for skinning, which it would not have been had the animal been dead for hours and rigor mortis had set in. Also, the skins deteriorated quickly in the hot sun once the buffalo were dead – so, stricken animals were left to suffer until the skinners reached them.

After skinning, the heavy fresh hides would be put on a packhorse for transport back to a central camp, where it was the job of Aboriginal women to trim, wash, and then dry and cure the hides with salt.

There were no roads into the shooting areas until well after World War Two, so every now and again the hides would be packed and taken to a landing place on one of the big rivers which cut across the plains. A lugger would come from Darwin and sail upriver to collect the hides, and leave supplies, mainly salt and ammunition, for the shooters.