Hey guys
How's the season going so far? I imagine people are stuck in pretty much across Europe?

Here in the UK, the fallow rut is really picking up and taking up all of my free time. I've taken a few bucks, but nothing particularly noteworthy yet.

The official season is now over for red stags and roe buck in Scotland and people will start turning their attentions to shooting birds pretty soon.

Hi Gabe.

I have had a slow start. 5 or 6 blank trips, I was on new ground, there does not seem to be the amount of deer around that there was in the spring.

Anyway, passed up on a huge fallow buck a couple of weeks ago. He was too big, too good and too bloody far from the car.

Went back to a more familiar bit of ground last Saturday. Managed to whack a nice little Fallow pricket. First of the season. Range was a bit far, nearer 300 yards than 200, but it was getting late and needs must. It was over an open valley and there was no chance, nor time, to get closer.

Rut has started here, I will be out again at early o'clock on Saturday.

Hi Gabe,

Yep things are getting busy here too. Just back in the country on Monday night. I've been shooting a few foxes in Sussex due to what I think is a release because the first one I shot last week stood and looked at me twice in the open at 25meters!!

Lots of deer about but all seem to be the wrong sex... typical.

The game shooting is off to a cracking start, and I think we have already had half a dozen days all in. We had a cracking day yesterday in a stiff breeze and very early released partridges that already are as big as I could imagine them being. It's nice to have to speed the swing up a bit.

Saturday we are shooting again then next week I'm off to Cyprus for 2 days partridges/hares and a day or two trying to catch Dorado on the fly with Dig, while squeezing some marketing in for next years African wingshooting.

Tomorrow I'll probably go out and see if I can roll over another fallow just to wind up Brian some more...


Rgds,
Kiri

HI guys

Also a bit slow start to the season

To date just one grizzly.

Before the hunt my guide told me that it is possible to call a bear in like a fox.

Trusted him previously with my life so I tried....and It worked !

I got it to stand up twice on the hind legs before it started to charge and i took the shot as the front leg touches the ground.

I also did captured the whole hunt on High definition video !

All twelve minutes of it.

Now onwards to boars between now and end of January

Slovenia - Fenced

Estonia - Normal driven in open areas

Also might join some friends on a boar trip to Iran but not fixed.

Of course there are a few deers in between but not worth talking about.

If you guys are interested I used a 45 Blaser with factory ammo in a R93 professional stock 400 grain projectile. The bear did run around 03 times and dropped 05 - 08 metres away.

If I had a choice I will bring my rigby again

Any chance of you uploading the video footage to youtube??

quote:

Originally posted by TOP_PREDATOR:
Any chance of you uploading the video footage to upload??

No thank you

London hunter

Sounded like one heck of a hunting trip

as for me
Been busy with ducks most of september , with a great days picking up on partridge thrown in
Just come back from a few days on the Ouse washes chasing more Ducks and Geese
Plus Already started on the Phessie's with our 2nd day today
Fallow hav seem to gone on their hols at the mo and Munties prooving just as elusive
such is life.... atleast it won't be long before I can start back chasing a few Roe as doe season is soon upon me
Happy hunting to you all

My season so far has not been the best. Got a couple of roe bucks early on and a few birds of various types, but it's been a while since I've touched the trigger. I'm out hunting moose as we speak. The dog is on a hot track, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Mr. G is on my neighbouring stand, btw.

Anders,

Regards to Mr. G.

I'm having a great season starter ..... 3 Red Deers Stags (1 Spike & 2 6ers) and yesterday's Piggie Drive Hunt season opener left me the Jagdkönig with 3 middle-sized porkers.

Couple more notches in the stocks of the 300 Weatherby & 9.3x62!

quote:

I'm out hunting moose as we speak. The dog is on a hot track, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Mr. G is on my neighbouring stand, btw.

wow- posting on AR whilst actually hunting is a whole new level of dedication!

Fallow rut going strong here, took a couple prickets and the smelliest buck yet yesterday morning.

Dedication for hunting or posting?
As you understood there wasn't much action. Not on Sunday either.

Great job, Gerry!! Can you please tell me your secrets to such success?

Got these three fellas this afternoon.



The bucks were roaring all over this evening and several bucks were out and visible. Unfortunately allong with a fox (which I unfortunately missed at 200yds ) I was out of ammo so stopped at three.

Should be enough to be getting on with though.

Rgds,
K

Nice one.

You're happy with that little rifle then?

Good one

I would have been happier if there was a fox in the photo too!!!

K

Could you please give us the low down on the rifle?

Looks like a Stiller from the bolt handle?

Thanks

JB

It's a special one indeed Jon, it's designed with a special "floating" scope mount made just for this rifle.

It apparently aids drop-proofing.

Sounds like there is a story to be had there Ghu.

Are you going to spill the beans or FB?

FB better, he'll get all unjustifiably upset if I do it.

Values drop proofing, does FB....

quote:

Originally posted by Ghubert:
FB better, he'll get all unjustifiably upset if I do it.

Values drop proofing, does FB....

Amir, you are a cruel man, Kiri is such a decent chap, and you give him such a hard time...

quote:

Originally posted by Claret_Dabbler:

quote:

Originally posted by Ghubert:
FB better, he'll get all unjustifiably upset if I do it.

Values drop proofing, does FB....

Amir, you are a cruel man, Kiri is such a decent chap, and you give him such a hard time...

?!

Who are you and what have you done with the Brian we all know and love?!

Bring him back immediately you hippy!

So was the 260 dropped also?

Or are we still talking about the Sauer 202 Avant Garde with absolutely gorgeous timber which was dropped from the highseat?

In the words of Officer Sweet in "Magnum Force"

Don't drop it!

Anyone know what I am talking about?

Nice haul - give us the rundown.

quote:

Originally posted by Claret_Dabbler:
So was the 260 dropped also?

Or are we still talking about the Sauer 202 Avant Garde with absolutely gorgeous timber which was dropped from the highseat?

What happened to what goes on tour stays on tour?

Oh, and the 260 has not been dropped yet, (at least not from a greater hight than 3 feet...)

The Sauer needed to be dropped so that Dave Mitchel could work his magic. The insertion of the metal rods into the fore end removed the problem of the flexible wood touching the barrel when leaning on a rest.

Jon,

The 260 is my Lawton that should have been a Stiller. Regardless of the hassle that gun has caused me it shoots like a dream. I had to have the action modified to accommodate my fat fingers for top loading but generally it does the job if I do my bit.

Rgds,
FB

quote:

Originally posted by Fallow Buck:
Got these three fellas this afternoon.



The bucks were roaring all over this evening and several bucks were out and visible. Unfortunately allong with a fox (which I unfortunately missed at 200yds ) I was out of ammo so stopped at three.

Should be enough to be getting on with though.

Rgds,
K

Very nice.

I wish we could do moderators in Australia, and I wish we could hunt with them in America.

$o, Kiri-K, Tee-P and the Ebster went on deployment the other day.


I met K-meister at his house at about one in the afternoon that day to lament on my ammunition situation after the African trip. Kiri turned out to be in similarly dire straits having run out of 308 for his Sauer, partitions for his 260 custom and was unsure whether the .243 and .375 were zeroed. I had six rounds in the world of a TSX load that was in it's infancy as far as accuracy was concerned, 2" at 100 yards roughly, and Kiri had 4 rounds of the partition load that his rifle was zeroed for.

We set a date for a reloading session and boasted about bringing a deer per round in that evening, as it turned out that it was mainly me who was joking at this point.

Ordinarily we would at this point be in the middle of a rather fine lunch, usually made up of those tidbits of game that others are perhaps less keen to eat than us, but since we are both on a ruthless diet at the moment we merely packed the truck and set off.

For the avoidance of doubt, "merely" in the context above involved the smallest and healthiest kebab the Edenbridge Kebab shop sold.

The bit of ground Kiri has down there is spread across a few farms that form a large contiguous playground for some absolutely massive deer dee in the rut. Some of you may remember the enormous fallow buck I shot last year in a wood with a six acre piece of clearfell in the middle, well it was this wood that we would have to pass on the way to meeting the T-man at the White Horse pub at half past two. The trouble was that whilst the small and healthy kebab pit-stop had made us a little late if we were to stop by the gate and have a little stalk up to the field that bordered the wood mentioned above we would be fairly late.

Still, the feeling was strong and K-Lo and Ebro-skillz felt obliged to just check the field and hurry on to meet the T-ster. We pulled the truck in just past the gate from the road and got into our kit. The stalk to the field was only about a hundred yards or so but the woods to our right are always, and I mean always, full of deer. We had stalked no more than a few yards when we seemed to both catch a flicker of movement in the woods. I caught the back end of a trotting doe about seventy yards away moving across us from left to right heading deeper into the wood. We had heard grunting from the road and soon enough as we inched forward I saw the doe's suitor following behind her.

I'm sure stalking men won't take this the wrong the way so I'll come out and say it; He was a big boy. I hissed at K-fed "buck, F@$%*&ing massive!" causing him to freeze but unfortunately facing the wrong way. By the time he slowly turned in the direction I was gesturing the buck had followed the doe deeper into the wood.

We took stock for a moment, I think Double-K had some idea of the quality of the buck from the size of my eyes when I spotted and I could tell he would now be going after it. In these circumstances I see no point in two people going after the deer and so dropped to my knee and watched the proceedings through the binos.

We could both hear grunting from the woods ahead of us, he must have found her, and with the bucks being so daft at this time of year felt sure he wouldn't be far. Neither of them had paid the least attention to us as they had passed us and I was expecting a hard drag back to the car at any moment.

K stalked down the ride about twenty metres before raising his rifle and pointing it in the opposite direction to that which the big boy had gone. I waited for the shot but he put the rifle down again and resumed his stalk down the ride to the edge of the field. It transpired that he had seen two prickets in the bushes behind him but with the wind wrong had bumped out of the the wood on that side and into the field. He was followed them but that is when the third pricket, unseen in all the excitement of course, broke from the edge of the field and ran across into the wood where the big buck had gone.

Nevertheless The K stalked into the wood and glassed for the deer but it seemed that the pricket had bumped the buck off and we heard no more grunting.

We went back to the car and drove to the pub where The T was patiently waiting in the car park, dressed like a cross between a Devon farmer and Hereford foxshooter. We got out into our chosen highseats nice and early and waited it out.

I was sat in the same field that I had missed the two foxes from earlier on in the season but since I had my rifle with me this time I was confident of clobbering them if they put in an appearance that night. T-Star was in the high seat 500 yards to my left and slightly above me overlooking the main wood on the other farm in the shoot and together we had the pleasure of sharing the evenings sport with a herd of a hundred bullocks. It was a nice evening and rather still. The pheasants were playing silly buggers as usual and even the rabbits were out early. I was looking idly to my left, in T-Shock's direction when a puff of smoke shot from what at that distance looked like his face. It took a moment to register that he had just fired a shot and took an age for the thump of his rifle to get to me. He didn't move from his seat and knowing that he is a bit of a fox specialist I was grimly pleased that he had slotted one of those foxes that have been munching their way through our host's birds all summer.

We heard a bang over the other side of the wood and soon enough I got a wonderfully profane lament by text message from Roll-K-Deep questioning the parentage of a fox he'd held too far over and missed soon after he'd gotten in to position. I was suitably sympathetic, no choice after my previous performance, and that was the last shot we heard until dark.

About ten minutes before full dark a group of deer, two bucks and two does burst from the woods in front of T-Cut and carried on at a full canter directly between us and up the hill behind us. The didn't even pause let alone stop until they were almost directly behind me and even then only the does. The first deer was a small but mature buck that looked like it had taken a thorough pasting and wasn't hanging around for desert. I was trying to twist 180 degrees in the highseat and get into aim before they ran into the blindside behind the oaks behind me and didn't notice the second, pursuing, buck until the does had stopped and I had gotten the rifle onto them to check their sex. It was then that I saw the big fella chasing the smaller buck, ignoring the does and in hot pursuit of his vanquished rival.

I tried everything to stop him, from grunting, to whistling to piratical Anglo-Saxon but he literally couldn't care less at that moment.

My phone buzzed with that worst of all text messages for a hunter to receive from his hunting buddies ("Mate is the key to the gate of the wood I'm in, in your pocket?") and so after waiting until it was basically too dark to shoot (sue me) I got out of the seat and got to the gate of the field to meet the boys.

Turns out some bugger had dropped three fallow with his last three rounds, due to being deprived of a certain key, had done a risk assessment on the gralloching bit and decided it needed needed three men to be entirely safe.

Oh alright, i'm being unfair, I also agree that if one shoots three deer and is out with three mates, it's only fair that they all get to gralloch one each so as not to feel left out.

I needed the practice and giving K-Whiff the rutty four year old to gralloch settled into my neck shot pricket. It smelled as pure as the driven snow compared to the 'orrible smelly bugger to my left.

We manged to get them cleaned up and into the truck in record time, useful actually as it transpired that I had forgotten about a dinner appointment with my girlfriend's family that night, mother's birthday or something like that apparently.....

Ok, that is roughly what happened.

I clean missed the fox at 200yds which should have been a slam dunk shot, however I was a bit busy wit the video camera at the time. I have an interesting piece of footage of a departing reynard not hanging about to find out what that was....

Anyway, with three rounds left and 30 mins before Dusk, and 4yo buck with the type of sulky amble of a teenager whoo mutters "it's not fair!!" too much, apeared in front of me at about 140yds. His head held low and looking like he'd just taken a pasting my grunts didn't stop him. with hindsight given that he'd just been beaten up it was unlikely he was interested in trying his luck again that eveneing. 40yds behind him was a young pricket. The buck eventually stopped to the words "oi Stop!!" and stood broad side at a touch under 200yds. A high shoulder shot sent him back in the direction from whence he'd come and left the pricket standing at 220 looking at his mate apparently going to sleep in the middle of the field. The second round caught our young friend about an inch below his adams apple and dropped him in his tracks whereupon a third pricket stepped out of the wood at about 250 to see what all the fuss was about. A quick work of the bolt and pick the spot on the quartering beast added the third to the larder with another dozen stood in the field watching their mates take a snooze.

while I was collecting up the three for the photo's I spent a few minutes discussing things with the roaring buck about 30 yards away in the wood. I thought it best to shut up given that I had no ammo left and built more for comfort than speed.

Rgds,
FB

Here's a smelly boy I took 2 weeks ago at last light. Nice coat on him.

He was not nicknamed 'Emperor'. I did not know his name.

Nice!

I am hoping I can get a diplomatic job at the Embassy in London or one of the consulates when I am done in Australia in 2013.

You guys take some nice deer.

Good job, Waidmannsheil!

Super stuff and nice rifle K

Thanks Jon, I think it will be good on the goats if I get my finger out and head up.

I've got a couple of guys want to come with me so perhaps we can meet up there?

Rgds,
K