Then I could practice shooting the dart instead of a broadhead. When I reached camp, I had a practice syringe attached to my arrow. We used the spot-and-stalk method of finding the animal and getting in a position to take the shot. My hunt for the rhino was an unbelievable experience. Or, at least, that’s the way the hunt is supposed to work. The force of the dart hitting the animal causes the shaft of the arrow to push the plunger of this hypodermic needle, which injects the rhino with an anesthetic that puts it to sleep. However, when you release the arrow, instead of having a broadhead on the end of it, it has a hypodermic needle known as a dart. So on a green rhino hunt, you go through all the stalking and hunting strategies that you go through if you’re planning to take the animal with your bow. After the hunt’s over, and the scientists have gathered all the information that they need to gather, then the animal is injected with a chemical that negates the anesthetic in the syringe that you’ve shot into the animal. You dart the animal with a drug, the animal goes down, the veterinarians and the scientists then study, measure, evaluate and draw blood from the animal to check its health, and you get to make pictures with the animal that you’ve taken while the animal’s unconscious. A green rhino hunt, or any kind of green hunt, is a catch-and-release hunt. I wasn’t hunting for a rhinoceros that was green.

Question: Bill, where did you find a green rhino to hunt?Įpeards: You don’t understand. This week Epeards shares with us some of his most memorable bow hunts. We won the national championship for two consecutive years – 20 – came in second in 2010 and won 20.” Epeards also guides and hunts in the United States. “Then I got with some other older fellows, and today we shoot the senior class of the Bowhunter Division of the IBO. “I shot competition archery for a lot of years, but I got away from it,” Epeards reports. A member of the PSE and Mossy Oak Pro Staffs, he works with Jimmy Houston Outdoors and is a member of a world-champion archery target team. The Bowhunter’s Dream: Bill Epeards’ “Green Rhino” Bow HuntĪuthor’s note: Bill Epeards of Goshen, Ohio, has traveled the world and taken some legendary animals on some unbelievable hunts.

Rhinoceros hunt