Hi chaps
With a few weeks off between jobs I did a run up to scotland for some hind stalking. I nearly cancelled due to the weather but fortunately I made it up and had a great few days stalking and even took a feral goat with a good friend before coming back down.

Very nice! That looks super cold!

I can see Robin but where's Batman? ;o)

Looks like you had a great hunt, congrats

Very nice indeed G

Great photos and landscape.

Winter stalking is my favourite

It looks stunning

Weidmannsheil on a successful hunt! Super pictures.

- mike

Beautiful country! Is it required to hunt with a supressed rifle there?

quote:

Originally posted by Ezra4570:
Beautiful country! Is it required to hunt with a supressed rifle there?

Not at all, but it is very common as it helps protects your hearing from the multiple shots and (I believe) makes it more difficult for the animals to localise the firing point, allowing you to take more than one hind from each group.

quote:

Originally posted by Boghossian:
I took Amir fallow stalking yesterday and we took 4 between us. Another frosty day kept the deer moving all day. The big buck is a very good one for this area. A great day with a good mate.

You look like a yank in this picture.

G'day!

Nice picture Amir and weidmansheil to both of you!

Where about in England is this? Is it near the Sussex area where Kiri has his hunt?

Gab,

Very nice pics and quite a successful trip too..Where abouts in the highlands were you stalking?

Regards,

Peter

Very nice - congratulations...

I got 2 wild boars last Tuesday - snow is such a great wondertime for hunting

Klaus

quote:

Originally posted by Pete E:
Gab,

Very nice pics and quite a successful trip too..Where abouts in the highlands were you stalking?

Regards,

Peter

Hi Pete - the hinds were shot in Argyll. The more hilly pics are from Moffat in the Scottish borders.

quote:

Where about in England is this? Is it near the Sussex area where Kiri has his hunt?

In Wiltshire, near the New Forest.

An amusing and eventful day, we always have an adventure on our impromptu "getaway" stalks.

A bit of rambling here follows....

Look like a yank?

It was one of those days. We all get them occasionally or perhaps I should say eventually. It was one of those days when the air was crisp, the frost seemingly permanent and the stalking interesting.

The photos Boggy posted give an idea of the woods in this cold weather but can't do justice to quite how picturesque our English woods can be when the frost outlines every leaf in the forest and the snow still lays in drifts in those out of the way places only we stalkers seem to be fortunate enough to haunt.

The omens were favourable, even as early as the night before. Bogy was to come over to my place and we were to set off at about half four to be in Wiltshire for a quarter to seven at the latest. That would give us a good half hour before the first possible hint of dawn which in light of our usual attempts at getting there before light, in our defence dawn was not at half four like the last time we tried, was quite an achievement.

We managed a few hours of sleep, I had beer in the fridge and there was Family Guy on the box, and actually did manage to hit the road at half four the next morning. It was cold that morning and not the soft southern cold those of us south of Watford complain about. It was several degrees below zero though no snow had fallen for a day or two what was already on the ground had not thawed but frozen into sheets of ice. The main roads seemed to be clear but the back roads where the gritters didn't go were murder. We nevertheless made reasonable time and pulled up in the gateway to the wood we were to sit up in that morning. It was a pleasant change to be nice and early for the morning session. During the early autumn months the only way to make sure you didn't spend the morning cursing is to drive up the night before and to sleep as uncomfortably as possible in the car, in passing Boggy considers it wisdom to answer sleep-talking, so that you can get to where you'll be stalking ten minutes before the first hint of dawn, rather than after.

No fear this time as official sunrise was ten minutes to eight, yet another reason why I love winter stalking. The sky was fully overcast and what moon there was made the made for a blue-ish predawn that was easily enough for navigation by the time our eyes had adjusted. Boggy and were to split up and stake out the fields and the wood respectively to hopefully suss out what the deer were doing on that particular day. We fairly marched a few hundred metres into the wood to the junction of two ride, one leading to the field and one further into the wood. This was where we were to go our separate ways and Boggy pointed out the tree with the high seat I was to sit in that morning. The conditions felt just right if you know what I mean. It wasn't yet dawn but with the light I really felt like I should be stalking to the seat rather than just trying to get there. Unfortunately the intervening sixty or seventy metres were across a treacherous waterlogged dip where the frozen crust would creak and crack like stalking on cornflakes and frozen-over puddles that sounded like a .22 going off if I was unfortunate enough to break one.

I still don't really know what to do in those circumstances, going slowly seems to make as much noise and crashing through, only for a longer period. This was deep in the wood and visibility was not yet enough to see well enough to shoot. It still hurt though when as I got to ten metres of the seat and the unmistakable sound of large animals departing rapidly through the undergrowth reached my ears.

Bugger.

I dropped down as soon as I heard the noise and got the binos up but it was obvious that they had vacated the area for the time being. I flashed my torch at Boggy to let him know I'd found my seat and got myself installed in position with that "I've buggered it for this session" feeling we all know and love.

Hope springs eternal however and I soon composed myself and settled in. I could see down the ride to for fifty metres to my right and a hundred and fifty metres or so to the left. The undergrowth was comparatively sparse in the woods in front of me as well and afforded opportunities of sorts should the nicely co-operative wind change later.

In the event I didn't have to wait long for the action to start. A noise behind me, more regular and purposeful than the bumbling of a pheasant made me slowly bring my rifle up to my shoulder in anticipation. I'm not sure why, but when there is a degree of uncertainty as to whether a newly spotted shape is a deer or not it almost always isn't. If it is a deer however one is usually immediately sure. Whenever and however one hunts there are always a few moments where one's heart leaps but wavers, an exciting sort of uncertainty, as to whether that shape, that sound, that reddish patch is just a previously unnoticed part of the landscape or not.

The sound intensified and seemed to be coming from the left and not very far away at all. I noted with some satisfaction that by the sound of it these deer were indeed moving from their feeding grounds in the field to the woods to bed down for the day and that we had gotten ourselves in to position in good time. Soon enough a doe poked her head out on to the ride to take a peek about 50 yards away from my seat. From the amount of noise I guessed that there had to be more than one deer in the herd and froze, watching her through the scope. She stepped out a few moments later moving slowly and quite relaxed as she stopped to take a mouthful of grass at the verge.

She looked to be a nice one and I gave her a bit of time to see if she had a follower with her. She appeared to be alone and I decided to take her when she presented a opportunity. It was still rather dark at this point and slipping the safety catch I waited until I thought she was broadside before putting the crosshairs just behind the shoulder and squeezing the shot off.

I opened my left eye as the rifle started coming down from recoil and caught sight of her again. She threw her head down at the shot and ran in to the wood she had come from behind me. I could see that she had hunched up a little by the time she disappeared from view.

A bit of a funk came over me. Something felt wrong and the more I replayed the last few seconds back in my head the more I became convinced that hit her too far back. I wasn't quite sure how, from a solid rest and at fifty yards, but despite the fact that the shot had felt ok I was convinced something wasn't right.
I was under instructions not to wander too far from the highseat too early, sensible as it's not particularly polite to beat through the woods when the other guy is trying the same trick as you the next field on, but a possibly wounded animal means all bets are off. I texted Boggy to let him know what had happened and waited fifteen minutes before climbing out of the highseat as quietly as possible.

I took stock at the foot of the tree with my heart in my mouth. I've only ever followed up a deer that I had wounded once before and that was not a pleasant experience. Fortunately this was not an evening stalk and the light was getting better rather than worse. Literally as I was fixing the position of where she had gone in relative to where I thought I shot her in my mind one final time the unmistakeable sound of a rifle shot rang out from the other side of the wood in the direction that the deer had come from and in the general direction Boggy was.

I checked my phone to see if there had been any response to my text message, there was none. I was now wondering whether I had a runner on my hands and the disturbance of getting out of the high seat had pushed her through the wood to where Boggy had thankfully been able to get a shot at her. With no reply for him I could only guess though and the possibility was pretty remote under serious scrutiny. I set off for the sight of the shot immediately to see if I could find some blood. Experience has taught me to do this slowly and to keep my eyes open and look around carefully the whole time as, at the risk of sounding facetious, spotting a deer is always nicer than having to track one.

I had gone a scant ten metres down the ride when something to my left, fifteen yards in the trees, caught my eye.

I froze.

It was a brown shape under the trees that was just a little too rounded to be a rock or a branch. I slowly got the binoculars up on it and a quick look confirmed that was my doe. She had gone in the trees and not knowing where the shot had come from actually coming toward me before dropping. She was on her side with her neck flat stretched out flat along the ground. I relaxed a little; she had gone only about twenty five metres from where I had shot her and looked as dead a doornail. I approached her slowly and by the time I was five metres away I thought she was absolutely dead.

I spoke above about my vast experience earlier, well I was to get a humbling lesson in my own inexperience just then.

Convinced she was dead and now completely preoccupied with where the bullet had gone I unloaded, slung my rifle on my back and getting my knife out of my pocket strode towards her to gralloch as quickly as possible and get back in my seat in case the rest of the group were to turn up.

I was about a metre away from her when she moved. She jumped to her feet, I don't rightly know who was more surprised at that moment, and bounded off further into the wood.

I dropped to my knee taking cover behind a tree and tracking the white fur on her backside as she ran straight ahead of me parallel to the ride. As she was running I could see that she was hit hard. She stopped about seventy meters away half obscured by a rhododendron thicket. She was looking around to try and spot me and I saw that although she was unsteady on her feet she would run if chased, how far I didn't know.

The only thing to do was to try and cut across to the ride and stalk in on her from the side using the rhododendrons as cover.

I crawled the short distance to back to the ride and on hands and knees slowly moved along the side of the ride to where I hoped she would still be. It took perhaps ten minutes to crawl my way to a gap in the scrubby verge from which I thought I see her. She was not where I had saw her from inside the wood but I could hear her wracking up blood every so often, the sound appearing to mercifully be coming from a static point five or six yards away. She had bedded down again, I was determined to end her suffering as quickly as possible and was pissed off with myself for being stupid enough not to have been able to end it earlier. I crawled across the ride this time trying to find a gap to shoot through without having to go in there and reveal myself to her again. I found a place, quickly stood up to give at least some sort of safety angle into the rock hard earth and shot her through the atlas joint.

I quickly dragged her to the side of the ride and having had no text yet from Boggy got back in to my seat. I waited for about half an hour hearing nothing from my friend and thinking about the preceding events. I finally got a text saying that he was on his way back.