Over the years we have been hunting the place, certain places have been named to make it easy to refer to different areas. Here are some of them..( some are self explanatory and others have a story behind them btw)
The Grassy Knoll...A small grassy ridge overlooking a paddock bounded on 2 sides by mature pines. Has room for 2 or more shooters.
Sarah's wet patch...The paddock that is overlooked by the grassy knoll- Named after the farm owners wife who planted it in exotic grasses for the horses...Deer also love it as it has a swampy area and a water source in the centre of it.
Lasso Gully...I lassoed a steer that had a tangle of barbed wire around its rear legs at the bottom of this gully- The owners had tried to catch it for 2 days before they called me in...
Alecs Knob...A bushy hill which overlooks a prime deer area including Gully 1, gully 2, gully 3 and the Corner....
Daves Love mound...a small mound on which Dave pitched his tent to stay overnight with his partner.....No deer were shot that night!
Arneys Ridge... A ridge overlooking a plateau that Arnie missed the biggest fallow buck he has ever seen from at a range of 80metres...
There are others but not fit for this family forum
Ok, so today Bh and I headed up to see if we could get the fallow buck I posted up in the game camera pics thread......
The area where I last saw him on sunday can only be hunted in an easterly wind, any other direction and the wind swirls through the tall pines and he spooks.
The plan was to climb Alec's knob and sit and wait till he came out as the elevation meant we could watch the tree line without winding him then plan a stalk. Halfway up the knob we passed through a small clearing and BH noticed a red stag between Gully 3 and the Corner. Damn thing must have seen our movement as we crossed the clearing cos it was looking directly at us from a range of about 600m.
As we watched him he spooked and ran to the Corner and disappeared. Damn!!!
WE continued to the top of the knob and settled in with the bino's. The wind was Easterly and blowing at around 25-30knots and cold, so we settled in just over the ridge so we could lay down and let the wind go over our heads. 90 minutes went by and nothing showed itself so we laid back in the sun with the occasional glance over the ridge. 10 minutes later I said to BH "I can smell deer".
We peeked over the ridge and saw the red stag back between the corner and Gully 3.
I said " There he is, go get him"
BH replied, " Its your knob, you go get him" Thats when the argument started...I wont repeat the language but it wasnt family friendly. In the meantime. while we were watching another 8 deer (Fallow) wandered out of the pines on the neighbours place and joined the red stag. The group included 2 pure white Hinds...In the end I was elected to carry out the stalk.
Heading back down the knob I used all the available cover there was and in places I had to belly crawl for up to 50 yds when I ran out of cover.
By the time I got off the knob, I had about 350m still to go. Between us was a large bowl and at the far end I knew if I got to the ridge on the far side I would be within about 60m of the stag....I managed to get into the bowl by crawling from scattered tree to tree until I dropped low enough so that I was hidden by the ridge between the stag and I. As I made my way through the scrub in the bottom of the bowl I sprung a doe about 5m from me that was having a nap. She bolted and ran straight towards the stag and does and disappeared over the ridge.
I quietly called BH on my radio to ask whether the deer had spooked and he said they were still there...so on I went.
Got to the far side of the bowl and started climbing the ridge which in places was up to 60deg angle. Got halfway up and ran out of breath so stopped for a minute or two then went on.
The scrub ran out about 20m from the top of the ridge so I stopped again to catch my breath before dropping onto my belly and crawling the last 20m,I poked my head up slowly to see the red stag about 50m away with its head down feeding and facing towards me...so I picked a spot on its head and prepared to take the shot....something didnt feel right so I moved my head off the scope sideways and realized that if I took the shot the bullet would hit the bottom wire of the fence on the ridge about 6m in front of me. I hadnt seen the wire cos of the long grass. Another 2 metres on my belly in full view of the deer, stopping every time the stag raised its head and I had an unobstructed shot so I settled in and started squeezing the trigger. The fallow does must have seen something cos the started jogging away, but the stag just looked at them and continued feeding. When the shot broke I heard the hit but to my surprise the Red stag shuddered, his front legs splayed out and he started to wobble his neck from side to side. I was sure he would go down but saw the opportunity to put it beyond doubt and sent a second shot into the top of his neck which dropped him like a sack of spuds
Range was 51m. Rifle was my T3x 243 with the leica Amplus 2.5-15x 50 ( Had it set on 4x)
So here are the pics...
The deer....A mature Red Stag. He had dropped his head gear about 3 weeks ago and was just starting to velvet up
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- 20241001_183421.jpg (4.71 MiB) Viewed 1555 times
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- 20241001_183549.jpg (1.62 MiB) Viewed 1555 times
Bh arrived and I ended up field dressing it where it fell....
We then both tried to lift it into the suzuki....couldnt get it off the ground, so we tried to lift the front end in, then hold it while we lifted the back end in....still too heavy!!
I ended up getting my small hoist out....tying it to the roof rack rails, lifting the back end up off the ground and tying it there, then we both managed to lift the front end up and slide it into the wagon. When we got back to BH's place we couldnt lift it onto the hooks in the chiller and ended up cutting it in half to hang it up.
Didnt see the Fallow Buck we were after but our freezer's will be looking good in 10 days time when we turn the stag into steaks , mince and sausages.
