This morning was a pretty good morning, new rifle (well barrel actualy) first time out on the fields instead of the woods and stunning weather.

I stalked to a likely spot but instead of looking and passing on, I unsheathed the secret weapon in the restless roestalkers armoury - yes you've guessed it - the flask. Getting myself comfortable I sipped away all the while thinking what a perfect spot this was for roe but how rarely I ever saw them here.

As the sun burned off the mist a doe slipped along the edge of the wood. A short while later 2 does and a little buck came out to brouse on a hedge before nipping back in. There followed lots of chasing before the big buck appeared.

Nice buck on the grass but the point that occured to me is that I've never really stopped at that field. I've spotted lots of times but never stopped. It made me wonder how often I've stalked past an empty field rejecting it when they probably come out some point before or later.

I've done similar with muntjac twice recently. Gone to spots where i usually walk through on route to a likely area and have practiced calling, thinking i wasnt likely to disturb anything, and had them come in at me.

Is anyone else calling them to good effect??

sws,

When I was an idle land agent in East Anglia I had a huge amount of fun calling muntjac with a buttalo.

Read "The Jungle is Neutral" by Fred Chapman Spencer for a thrilling account of muntjac calling behind Jap lines in Malaya.

1894,

It's like when you get out of a seat because nthing is moving then as you come back there are deer in front of your previous position!!

I've often been out working and seen the deer come out in the middle of the day to catch some sun. It makes me wonder why we need to get out of bed at the crack of dawn??

Did you get a uck then out of this little party?

Regards,
FB

It was obvoiusly rush hour in our woods last night. I was just checking some load developments for my 308 and fired off approx 12 rds over a hour. Once out of ammo I packed everything up and walked back to the car. A young muntjac stood in the middle of the ride until I was 25 m away then ran off barking. This was followed by a roe buck passing back into the wood and about 5 mins later 4 fallow. Lucky my freezers full. We have shot a lot of fallow mid afternoon as they sunbathed.

Regards

Mark

I put some poison down for rats around our farm buildings. As far as I was aware they were mostly in one area /shed. 5 days later there are rats dieing/ turning up dead all over.ie their movements are not at all confined to the areas casual observation would have me believe.
Similarly the deer if they're in the vicinity come and go often in the most unpredictable manner... how often does one inadvertantly "bump" them? why? because you weren't really expecting to see them just here or just there.
Of course it's that unpredictability that adds a lot to the sport, I'm sure you'd agree.