BUFFALO HUNTING IN AUSTRALIA

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 183, 29 April 1919, Page 6

BUFFALO HUNTING IN AUSTRALIA

PICTURESQUE LIFE OF ADVENTURE

IN NORTHERN TERRITORY

Reputed to ho the world's greatest buffalo shooter, few men are as interesting to converse with an is Mr. IV Cahill, who is in Melbourne on leave after spending ti\ years in charge of tho Federal Government aboriginal station at P.cr-pella, near Darwin. In his wholo career as a buffalo shooter, Mr. £ahill has accounted for between 9000 and 10,000 animals in the Northern Territory, and in tho course of his hunting he has 1 ad many narrow escapes from death. On one "occasion Mr. Cahill, owing to Lis rifle jamming, while shooting in a swamp,,had to submerge with only his nose an'd eyes showing above water toi save himself from an infuriated animal which had been ■wounded and was charging him. His narrowest escape from death, he says, occurred when a buffalo fell when rushing at him. Mr. Cahill'a horse fell on ton of tho manned buffalo, and its rider was thrust between tho two struggling animals. Speaking of buffaloes in tho Territory, Mr. Cahill said that the animals wero first brought into the north by tho Admiralty, in the early days, in an expedition p'artlv to exploit the Coburg Peninsula, and "partly to provide for starving shipwrecked crews on the coast. Onco introduced the buffaloes thrived and spread to the Bast Alligator Hirer. Tho buffaloes running on the Adelaide River, near Darwin, were released by the South Australian Government from tho EscapeCliffs settlement, before 1870. The proeenv of these animals are tho buffaloes in the Territory to-day. Tho animals left in tho East Alligator district ere fev now, states Mr. Cahill,