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My wife and I did this hunt last year - I was the hunter and she the observer - and we agreed on the final day that we would come back in 2022, both as hunters! This is not a trophy hunt for big Siberian sized roe buck heads. This is more like a forestry management hunt aimed at controlling numbers and taking excess roe deer off of the concession.

The roe deer rut at Gutshof Blumberg, in Brandenburg Germany, a few kilometers from the German Polish border. The nearest big town being Stettiin, if that helps anyone with the location. We would hunt roe bucks, yearling does, yearling red deer stags - spikers , European boar but no mature sows and some predators - fox, raccoon, badger and enok if anyone wanted to shoot one to have it mounted. We would hunt over a long weekend, mornings and late afternoon / evenings out of high seats until dark, with six ‘sessions’ in total. K&K Premium Jagd in Dortmund, are the outfitters and hold the hunting rights for group hunts in Blumberg. I like K&K and have booked through them a number of times. Simple, no lengthy pages of contracts and waivers and exclusions - very easy.

It would be a group hunt with 8 or 9 rifles. Many repeat guests over many years. We met some of them last year.

Roe deer are the most widely hunted game animal in Germany, with over 1.2 million roe deer taken annually! That is a lot of roe deer! Followed quite a way back in numbers by European wild boar.

And as for the region, Brandenburg, this is the least populated State in Germany with only 2.5 million inhabitants over 29 million square kilometers! Schwedt, where we would stay has a population of 30.000.

In the run up to this trip, we mentioned it to a few of our hunting friends and the question started to pop up “Can we come to?” And in no time we were 7 or 8 interested in the hunt. Well, long and short was that me speaking with K&K they suggested we take a weekend to ourselves otherwise the party would be too big and so that is exactly what we did.

Thursday 11th to Sunday 14th August, a group hunt concentrating on roe buck at Blumberg. We were 8 guns in total including our youngest son, but had one drop out a couple of weeks before the off, so it was 7 and one observer.

With all preparations done and bags and guns packed, we all set off in 4 cars early Thursday morning on the drive west to east across Germany, some 750 kms plus minus passing south of Berlin and then north east to Schwedt where we would stay. Wonderful German autobahns with no speed limits for most of the way and 125 kms of country roads at the last stage.








We all arrived within 90 mins of one another and checked into the same hotel that we used the year before - good rooms, decent showers and a good breakfast and 25 minutes drive from where we would hunt. Ideal.

Arriving 30 mins early at the meeting point - the Blumberg Estate Schloss, we were greeted with champagne and a cold meats and cheese platter, whilst the head Forrester / Jagdaufseher (shoot manager) checked our hunting permits and explained the do’s and don’ts for the hunt - all roe bucks, yearling does et cetera, shoot for the shoulder, please no overly long shots and remain on your stand until the designated hunt end times at 8 a.m. and 9.30 p.m.. Only then come down from the high seat and check the game that you have hopefully shot! David, Andre, Michael would drive us to our high seats and collect us after the shoot. Andre also had a Bavarian bloodhound should any game need to be tracked or followed up on.








And with that, we loaded up into their trucks and vehicles and the hunt began!

Now rather than a day by day account of the trip, allow me to jot down some anecdotes and tales of the four days that I hope will be of interest or amusement.


The Jagdkönig (the Hunt King)

It’s a European thing, the person who shoots the most game whether feathered game on a bird shoot or number of animals on a driven shoot or a high seat shoot like this one, is crowned (read proclaimed) as the Jagdkönig at the end of the hunt.

I suggested we all put EUR 10,- into a hat and that the person who shoots the first roe buck takes the sweepstake. My son countered and suggested that the Jagdkönig should take it at the end of the hunt. We all agreed and EUR 70,- was in the pot.

The guides had us seated in our high seats and stands just before 6.00 p.m. and at 6.05 p.m. a single shot rang out through the woods.

“Roe buck down!” my son texted into the WhatsApp group that we had set up for this trip. And a spectacular buck it was indeed. The way the German’s count it, the buck was an uneven 8 pointer - being 4 points on the one antler and 3 on the other. A magnificent roe buck and one that will be hard to beat! We later laughed that he had changed the suggestion from first buck shot to Jagdkönig but he would have the last laugh later.


Seats & Stands





Blumberg has approx 1.000 h of woodland and forestry being mixed woodland and blocks of pine. The have some 100 plus high seats and stands for the hunting. There is no real 'walk & stalk' hunting in Germany other than for chamois and co in the mountains. It's very much high seats and stands and sit and glass. Here the stands were all well maintained and carefully positioned taking into account the prevailing winds. Paths to the stands from the forrest tracks were swept free of leaves and twigs so that the walk in was pretty quiet. All in all, a great set up.

My first evening hunt was ‘turn right at the tree with the red mark and 50 meters into the wood is the stand’. I spied a roe buck early on behind the stand but he caught my wind and bolted.





















Guns & Rifles



We were a somewhat mixed group - one of the guests sported a Suhler Drilling in 7x65R with a 16 guage barrel and a .222 insert barrel. A superb rifle. I carried a 7x65R Kipplauf by Doumoulin in Belgium, whilst my wife successfully used her trusted CZ 550 in .30-06. The ‘youth’ carried a Mauser M03 in .308 and a carbon Sauer XT in .30-06. And the arsenal was rounded off with a full stock Mannlicher Schonauer in .270 WM. A great collection of hunting rifles.












The routine

Sleep deprivation was the name of the game! Up at 03.30 a.m. and depart the hotel at 04.00 a.m. for the 25 minute drive to Blumberg. At 04.30 a.m. we were driven to our respective high seats (note - nobody sat in the same seat twice) and we hunted til 08.00 a.m.. Then it was back to the Schloss for coffees and a recount of the morning’s hunt and then the drive back to the hotel for breakfast.

Most nights and morning drives we saw a lot of game along the roads and on the fields - fallow and red deer, roe deer, foxes, raccoons and rabbits and hares. We had to break hard once or twice to avoid a collision with roe deer!

After breakfast, we napped for a few hours and then explored the town or drove over the border to Poland for lunch and site seeing.

And then it was back to the hotel, suit up and 4.30 p.m. depart to Blumberg for the 5.00 p.m. to 9.30 p.m. evening hunt.

After the evening hunt, there was BBQ and drinks with an open bar of German beer on tap and wines and soft drinks.

Shortly after 11.00 p.m. most nights it was back to the hotel and sleep til 03.30 a.m. and then repeat .....

By Sunday being day 4, we were all starting to drag our heels a little bit from the lack of sleep!



The weather & the hunting





We were blessed or cursed with blue skies and sunshine the whole trip and temperatures in the 30 degrees C!

The whole area was incredibly dry with the organizers telling us that they had not had good rains for some 5-6 weeks. Dry leaves were on the ground as if it were autumn with big swathes of dry grass in some of the cuts. Other areas were more sheltered and green.

But all in all it was dry and dusty. It did however make it easier to hear the game when it was moving. On the final morning, a sounder of 10 pigs passed my stand in the ‘still to dark to shoot’ light and it sounded like a soccer team running through the woods! It was a shame it was still dark as my hand-held thermal showed me a 60-70 kgs boar leading the sounder! A nice looking pig!

The other aspect of such high temperatures was that the roe deer were not as active as they typically would be with temperatures in the 20s celsius.















The roe bucks!








Our son shot the first and the heaviest head of the trip. A great mature buck of 4-5 years. He then shot two yearling bucks, one of which was abnormal with a spike on one side and two points on the other. An interesting buck to take! With three bucks he was the Jagdkönig!

















Another rifle shot two mature bucks but held back on a seriously large buck that was some 120 m away from his stand and quartering away. That one will bug him for a while!

My wife shot a yearling that she called in with a roe call. The .30-06 dropped the buck on the spot on a sand track running through the woods.





Just after 08.00 a.m. my wife left her stand with our Springer, when a mountain biker battled his way along the sandy track puffing and panting. We arrive at the same moment in the jeep to load the buck.

Seeing the buck on the track and my wife and the parked car but not her CZ .30-06, which was sleeved and at the foot of the stand, he assumed it was a road accident. Pushing his bike past my wife he announced “No need to call the vets, nothing you can do for him. He’s a goner.” And away he cycled, leaving us smiling and laughing!





Nine bucks were shot in total as well as a 55 kg pig. I was briefly tempted to shoot a yearling roe doe on the final morning but let her go her way.

Over the 4 days we all saw game - red deer stags and hinds, plenty of roe deer, pigs, raccoons, lots of badgers, foxes, weasels and iltis and lots of bird life - blue cranes, storks, fish eagles, kestrels, woodpeckers and more! It is simple a great area for wildlife unless you are a fish!





(A flight of very loud blue cranes!)



News Headlines!

The day we arrived, the River Oder, which is the border between Poland and Germany and which runs through the town that we were staying in, made the news headlines!








A suspected chemical spill (mercury was the first theory) had polluted the river above where we were staying all the way down to Frankfurt an d Oder. Tons and tons of dead fish were floating on the surface along kilometers of the river. Teams of police in gloves and white overalls were netting the dead fish and bucketing them into a industry container. The Polish Government announced that they were testing the fish carcasses for the cause.

Post script- this is now running as a main European story in the news - environmental disaster on the Oder - 500 km of polluted river and over 100 tons of dead fish! That river will need years to recover. Why do people manage to F things up like this ?

We actually saw the authorities netting the dead fish from the river on the day we drove over the border to Poland.


Poland



A 2 km drive from our hotel and we were in rural Poland. A lot of border Germans regularly drive over into Poland to fill up with cheaper fuel, shop for fruit, vegetables and beer and to have their hair cut! All cheaper in Poland. We filled up with fuel and went into one of the local towns for some shopping. It was a bit like going back 25 years in time and despite the end of socialism everything had a very ‘east’ feel about it!










(Signs warning about African swine fever!)


End of the hunt





Sunday morning, after the rifles were unloaded and the hunting over, a shot pig and a roe buck were laid on their right sides on a bed of oak leaves in the courtyard.

The host / owner of the shoot, Erimar van der Osten, stood at the head with the guns on one flank and the ‘horns’ on the other. After a short closing speech, our son was declared ‘Jagdkönig’ and he and each successful hunter was handed a ‘Bruch’ (an oak twig) with a "Waidmannheil" which is then worn in the cap / hat to show that you have successfully shot something. German tradition. We then played or sounded the various tunes for roe buck, boar and the end of the hunt, with five of us playing the hunting horn and the hunt was declared to be over.

It was a memorable long hunt weekend. A great group of friends. Plenty of game. No animals were wounded or lost. Lots of smiles and laughter. A good hotel and hearty breakfasts every day together on the terrace in the sunshine. Nothing more to wish for.

There is already talk and plans being made for a repeat in 2023!


Thanks to K&K for the organisation. Thanks to all the helpers that looked after us and the hunters that made the trip and thanks to all AR members and readers for taking the time to read through this report!





Waidmannsheil!

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Hi Charlie,
As is customary another great report and enjoyable read. Indeed it must be a great way to spend a long weekend. Good hunting perhaps without the pressure of great expectation but no less enjoyable and worthwhile.
Yes, shocking about the loss of fish life in the Oder River. And so sad.
Cheers

Weidmannsheil Charlie!
A great hunt and a well written report.
I didn't know that such an adventure was possible in Germany.

Great report, thanks for posting it!

Thanks Charlie! Looks like you had a great time. Congratulations to the Jagdkönig and his parents!

Congrats very cool.

I watch Kai-Uwe's youtube channel. His videos are excellent.

Saw his booth at Dortmond, but I don't think I have ever talked to him.

Waidmannsheil!

Seth

Excellent report Charlie and I once more am jealous of your armament and adventures! Well done.

Great report on a fine weekend hunt. I always wanted to hunt in Germany. Have lots of family in and around the Bocholt area.

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Thanks gentlemen for all the comments. It was indeed a fun hunting long weekend with good friends!

Already have the group together for 2023!

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