Did a charter friday and for the first time in 17 yrs of working on the boat I got sea sick. Ate some food a couple of days prior to the trip and hadnt felt all that good....get out on the water and after 3 hrs of the boat going up and down in the 3 metre swells I bowed to the inevitable and threw up. Was fine after that but got home feeling like crap. Then I got the call about getting a deer....
Headed up to the farm about 3pm sat, met D and BH, hatched a plan involving us splitting up and while BH got the Grassy Knoll, D took Alecs Knob and I ended up overlooking the lake on the south side of the farm that had a thick stand of mature pines at one end.
I spent 30 minutes glassing the clearings in the tree's and bush around the lake and didnt see any deer, so I broke out the hand held thermal and 'glassed' the bush. Nothing......
Moved along the ridge a couple of times to change angle and finally picked up 3 animals in the thick pines about 300m away.
Once again I had to resort to belly crawling and using the terrain till I got to within about 80m. Could see the deer clearly in the handheld thermal but they were completely invisible to the naked eye being hidden by the close packed pines and shielded by the scrubby underbrush.
Belly crawled another 10-15m and settled in behind the scope to try and pick out what they were. 10 minutes later I could finally see fur in a patch of scrubby crap but couldnt make out any details of what it was....Then it became a waiting game....Who was going to move first?
15 minutes later I finally saw movement!
The 'fur' I had been watching stood up and took a couple of paces.....I saw its head as it moved through little 'windows' in the scrub and between the trees...a 3 yr old spiker! ( didnt want a doe as most of them are pregnant and due to drop their younguns )
The spiker stopped a couple of times but never presented a shot. another 10-12 minutes of staring at patches of fur and finally I could see the head from its nose to its ears then a pine obstructed the top of its neck before another gap showed the bottom 2/3rds of its neck followed by a larger tree that obstructed its shoulders then a gap where I could see its rear quarters. The Leica scope was doing the business looking into the shaded area under the trees and gave me a clear window about 7" wide and 14" tall of the lower neck but there were a couple of leaves blocking part of the window. What I needed was the deer to move forward about 5" to clear a small branch. The waiting continued for about another 8 minutes and finally the spiker stretched forward giving me an unobstructed view of its lower neck. Range was about 77m.....The window had shrunk to about 5" wide and 12" high........
The 243 'barked' and as the rifle recoiled I heard the 'thump' of a solid hit but lost the sight picture. Nek minute there were deer scrambling for the hills but I was confident the shot was good.
Wandered over and found the spiker dead under the scrub. Dragged it off the slope and took these pics of it then had to scramble to dress it out before it became too dark to see what I was doing....
Entry side pic..
- 20241005_183333.jpg (7.88 MiB) Viewed 1446 times
- 20241005_183352.jpg (8.01 MiB) Viewed 1446 times
Dressed it out, then decided to skin it while it was hanging in the tree so I could take it straight to the butchers chiller. ( They wont accept animals with the skin on due to health dept regs)....Wrapped it in cheesecloth and let it cool down before D and BH arrived to help me haul it up the hill as there was no way I could get the vehicle down to it.
Once again I had avoided being presented with the 'Meat Waster Trophy'.....
My body still hadnt recovered from tuesdays outing and was still suffering from the effects of yesterdays 'battering' .....its now 5.12am sunday and my aches and pains make sleep almost impossible.
It doesnt help that my cousin (same age as me) was involved in a serious MV crash on thursday night which I found out about an hour after getting to the farm. He is in an induced coma and is due for surgery today to try and repair his shattered hips and see what parts of his legs they may be able to save. The Dr's have told the family he has a 50/50 chance of making it through the operations...
A few prayers sent his way would help
