After quite a long break from stalking I finally got out again. A friend kindly invited me (thanks mate) to join him hunting one September morning. We met just before 6am and after a quick drive to his ground I was on my way to the high seat. I knew the area quite well, but the place had not been my lucky spot so far. First time I was there was during doe season and three deer were making their way across the field when I scared them away loudly opening Buttler Creek scope covers… 🙄 The second time round I got a nice buck feeding just behind the high seat, but it was not safe too shoot… I was quite optimistic as the ground is superb and holds good number of deer, but September is rather quiet month for roebucks when most of them are resting after the rut, but younger deer should be moving about. At least I was hoping to see one and I knew there was a nice six-pointer still in the area.
I climbed the high seat, attached my camera to the rail and loaded my .223. It was still early, a bit too windy to my licking, but at least dry… 😆 Previous week was very wet and forecast for today was not very optimistic, but enjoyed every second anyway…
False rut
There was no movement for nearly an hour. Only pigeons and crows woke up and were flying around making a lot of noise. There was eventually enough light and I turned on the camera to film pigeons, clouds and anything that looked more interesting than a telegraph pole in the middle of the grass field in front of me. 😆 I was playing with the camera when I spotted a deer running across the field no more than 80m to my right. I grabbed the rifle, but film maker got the better of me and I wasted a few precious seconds to zoom in on the buck… He was looking straight at me on the high seat and I could not move to shoulder the rifle. After a short pause he ran away without stopping… I cursed myself for wasting the opportunity…
I was not more concentrated and was more frequently glassing the right-hand side of the field. The buck was running away from something, I hoped maybe bigger buck chased him away and st. Hubert would still give me the second chance 🙄 A few minutes passed when I saw a deer jump across the field. I grabbed my 8×56 Zeiss binoculars, but could not locate the deer. It was when I realized how tall was the grass out there! Another few minutes later I saw another movement closer to the telegraph pole. I spotted a pair of ears and later another pair of ears with antlers between them 😆 The deer soon disappeared but I saw them again and it looked like the buck was chasing the doe. Chasing repeated a few times and I found the call in my pocket, called a few times, but the deer were too busy and never reacted to the call. To be honest it was also quite windy and I never really blown hard as was afraid too spook them. It was September after all, the rut should have been long gone, but it looked like they were rutting.
Neck shot
I was considering my options as most of the time I could only see ears or heads. The buck was also on the move most of the time only taking a bite here and there. It looked like there was no point risking a shot in a long grass as they were slowly getting closer to the high seat. This time I got rifle in my hand when the doe suddenly ran towards me and paused no more than 60m away. The buck followed and stopped facing the high seat. Immediately he knew there was something not right as was looking straight at me. He was not going to give me a second chance and was about to bump when I squeezed the trigger with the cross hairs high on the neck. He dropped on the spot and the doe jumped off, looked back on the buck, he was not going to follow her so she ran away. I quickly climbed down to bleed the buck, but by the time I got there he was already dead.
A nice young buck, 15kg larder weight.
Video
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