Axis Deer hunting
View 34 hunts View all hunts34 hunting trips from 18 outfitters starting from $1,650
Where to hunt Axis Deer
Axis, or chital, deer is a native of the Indian subcontinent, and was successfully introduced to many areas outside its home range. India has banned hunting for sport since 1970s, but you can hunt Axis deer all over their new home ranges. The prime destinations include Texas, Australia, and Argentina. Uruguay is a competitive South American alternative, and those who holiday on Hawaii may include an Axis deer hunt in their holiday program as well. Also found as a non native species on a few game ranches in South Africa.
Price distribution
The price of an Axis deer hunt depends on whether you want just to hunt deer to fill the freezer, or to harvest a trophy-book buck. Doe, antlerless, or non-trophy hunts start at $400 or so; trophy hunting for a few days with food and lodging will set you back about $3,000-$5,000. Axis deer hunting in Australia and South America often comes as a combination hunt with other big game species such as red deer or buffalo, and the price of such packages may be well over $10,000.
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When to hunt Axis Deer?
There are opportunities to hunt Axis deer year round. A peculiar feature of this deer is that the bucks don’t have any specific time for shedding antlers, so any given herd of Axis deer will contain males with fully formed antlers, antlers in velvet stage, and underdeveloped antlers. However, in Texas most bucks will rut in May-June.
Hunting methods All hunting methods (12)
Every hunting method is applicable to Axis deer hunting, except probably calling, and that because not many people can imitate its peculiar barking mating call. Spot-and-stalk is the method most commonly employed by trophy hunters, and Axis deer are a great quarry for this method, being day grazers. Game ranches typically have stationary blinds and high seats over feeders and waterholes, for bow hunters and beginners. These blinds are usually a great place for wildlife watching, and in a good operation with high density of wildlife you’ll never have a dull moment.
Why hunt Axis Deer?
Axis deer have beautiful skins, with fawn-like spots that they keep over their lifetime, and the bucks carry long antlers, typically with three points on the side, that hunters keep as mementoes of their experience. Axis deer are said to be incapable of developing intramuscular fat, and so their flesh is literally fat-free, lean and healthy. If your freezer is empty, and you feel like deer hunting, but the deer season is far away, Axis deer is your best bet. Just don’t think it will always be easy. While with game ranches you can vary the difficulty of the hunt (and the easier kinds work great for introduction into deer hunting), a mature free-ranging Axis buck is as vary and skilled at avoiding danger as any public-land whitetail.
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