My son drew Powderhorn for the youth hunt this year, and we are beyond excited. If anyone has info or tips they would be willing to share, that would be amazing. Thanks.
Hunt the stands during prime hunting hours then walk around the unit the rest of the time and you should find some game. Bring a knife sharpener for skinning a Sambar
Are the shots reasonable ? If he practices out to 200 are we pretty solid ? I have never hunted that country before. We fish down there but That’s about it.
None of the stands I hunted out of presented long shots. They will corn some of the stands before the hunt using corn donated by previous hunters. I left a few bags myself. As said stands prime time or first day. Then walk the compartment checking water for Sambar. Take lots of coolers and sharp knives. I made the mistake of cleaning redfish all week before with mine and no way to sharpen it right. One of the staff Justin helped me out with that God bless him. And that said the staff is wonderful . They know the animals and know the compartments. Pay attention to what they tell you. Perhaps bring a cushion or boat cushion to have some seat height adjustment for the kids if needed.
My son shot his Sambar at 160 yds with a 7mm-08. This was shooting down the road from nearby the stand. One thing to note about the couple previous comments saying to walk the compartment checking water - this is not a strategy for the youth hunts. The youth hunts have assigned blinds, not compartments so the youth hunters are supposed to hunt only from their stands. That being said, the staff told us that since we were "at the end of the line" as far as stands go, meaning there was no youth hunters beyond our position so noone would be passing us, that we could hunt out of the stand and use the road as a shooting lane.
On the first day, we stayed in stand until about 30 minutes of light left - saw one bull sambar on the edge of the pond but he came and went quick. Also saw a cow and calf sambar and a small 8-point whitetail that my son did not want to shoot. With 15-minutes left we moved to the road so we could see a little further for last light. Glad we did because a group of hogs and a sambar bull came out on the road and he shot with about 4 minutes of legal light left. The bull made it into the brush - which I worried about a LOT - so we waited 20 minutes before trailing in the dark. Luckily he only went 5 feet off the side of the road before piling up and it was easy to find. The staff came out with the UTV and picked it up to take it back to the skinning rack.
Killed a nice 11-point whitetail on day two and were a little too late on the draw to get a shot at a group of hogs under the stand (we slept in and it was already after sunup when we were approaching the stand.) The boy wanted to hit the Powderhorn Slam and get an Axis too, but only one Axis Doe was killed the entire weekend we were there.
My daughter and I plan to show up for standby for the 1/22-23/22 hunt period! Hopefully she gets lucky then! If not, we'll make a day of it and maybe do some fishing down there somewhere!
If you stay ready, you don't have to get ready! -Anonymous
Wondering if Sambar are good to eat. Have found most animals around an aquatic environment are not that great.
My only experience is with one mature stag. I took excellent care of the meat and had it in salted ice. Cut up and packaged by myself in freezer paper the day after I got home. Much of the lesser cuts and trimmings I took to Kubys to be made into sausage. The meat is less gamey than whitetail. In fact it has no gamey taste or smell whatsoever. Beef has more smell than this meat. The only bad is the meat overall is tough. Even the backstrap is tough. The lesser cuts are extremely tough. Things like bacon wrapped pieces on the grill have to be cut thin across the grain. The sausage is great, but know when I took it in to Kubys I had added a mix whitetail, feral hog, and wild turkey trimmings into it as well. If I ever kill another, beyond quartering I doubt I will take as much of the trimmings off the animal as I did this one. Mine weighed something like 365lbs field dressed and I trimmed everything I could. It was a lot of meat. To utilize some of the meat we tried jerky as well, but even that turned out to be almost too tough to eat. Done again, I would have ground it and run it through a jerky gun. I don't know if Sambar meat tends to be tough normally or if mine was due to being an older animal.
I had mine ground into hamburger and mixed with beef fat and it was great. The back straps got sliced thin and tenderized they were not tough at all. Mine was a doe that field dressed around 260
Anybody down there score an Axis? or any other EXO's? ummm like Nilghi? I understand that they are allowed but not all that common to bring one home. Ron
Last edited by WileyCoyote; 02/12/2211:32 PM. Reason: clarity
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Don't think there are any Nilgai on the property, or at least there were not 2 years ago when we went, absolutely no mention of them in the orientation. There are axis and several were harvested our year (January 2020). My son saw pigs, whitetail, sambar and turkeys (not on the harvest list) and connected on whitetail and sambar. Youth hunts were run as assigned blinds, adult hunts as compartment.
