ok, tonsilitis has gone and i have been out...
Hi folks,
here we go. Sav 250, you are right roe deer are not a big animal. I use .30-06 because it kills everything in the UK with ease and shoots flat enough and long enough for my longest shots. I have used .243 on roe, this is the minimum in England... my experience has lead me to 7mm08 and .30-06.
i set my alarm for 0330hrs. (the only problem with summer hunting) all my kit was ready. i take a mauser .30-06 rifle, custom design and build. with a bushnell trophy 3 - 9 x 40. I use 165 gr interlocks in IMI brass and 50 gr of N140. The scope has flip up covers. I wear contacts or glasses but today i wore my glasses... the vision is better.
I wore some army surplus boots and olive green trousers. A british DPM smock and a floppy brown wide brimmed hat.
I take some sticks to shoot off. They are plastic covered garden sticks with a ring of bicycle innertube holding them together.
i carry an army surplus respirator bag. in that i carry a knife, a spare knife a bone saw a gerber ezi zip, a but out, a head torch, some baby wipes, hand cleaner, rope, rubber surgical gloves and lots of pieces of cotton based string.
I have some Minox 10 x 40 binos. (these are on my replacement list). In my pocket i have a bottulo call and a face viel.
Most important is Daisy the chocolate labrador bitch. She is 7 now and comes incase i need to recover a wounded animal.
The piece of ground has Muntjac, Roe and Fallow deer on it. at the moment Roe bucks and Muntjac (bucks and does) are in season. In the UK i can stalk deer any day of the year.
the ground is about 2500 acres of mixed woodland and arable land. there are public footpaths all over it. The land backs onto a large steel works.
one of the useful things is it when the wind blows i get to see which way it is going.
ok, we got on the ground at about 0420hrs. Parked up, Daisy stayed in the car curled up on the back seat... as soon as i walked round the corner of the track.
my first stalk was up a woodland ride with overhead cables. this is normally a pretty good stalk. I really worked hard up here. Really slow, really quiet, plenty of time on my binos.
to each side there is fairly mature but quite dense woodland. i think it is about 100 years old.
in this one you can see a couple of routes the deer have taken in and out of the woods. This ride is not the best... there is a recently cut one further up the wood. this is the best one because there are lots of herbs growing in it... the plan is to work towards it.
I went over a ridge and looked down the ride stood and watched for a while. I wished i had a flask of coffee with me! i could have sat quite happily for a while and watched drinking a coffee this is the view i got.
Nothing came out so i carried on walking. As i went i heard a deer bark out a distress call... both roe and muntjac do this. I didn't know which it was so i gave a couple of squeezes on the buttolo. The muntjac respond well to this all year round. The roe only in the rut... no joy.
I found this little area. Sometimes roe will stand at a small tree and fray against it with thier antlers, they often leave little patches like this one.
the stalk was negative through the woods.
I needed to walk round the wind a bit to get in a better spot for the best ride so i turned back down the wind and walked back along another track in the woods. As i walked down the track i was stood looking at this....
as i watched i saw a doe run across in front of me from right to left. about 50 yards away. it was coming from down wind... i was amazed she didnt scent me. Its unusual for a deer to be running about with no reason. About a couple of seconds later a buck ran from the same direction. I lifted my rifle into the shoulder and against both sticks at the same time. I clicked the rifle safety off and hoped the buck would stand. It was interested in the doe... its blood was up. If you shout at the animals they will sometimes stop and look for the shout. But this one wouldnt have done. It would have flattenned its ears and ran off into the woods. He had slowed to a trot. the choice is to take the 50-60 yard shot in the chest at a trot or try the neck. Because of the movement i went for the low heart shot. The 30-06 reported. I reloaded quickly and watched. The deer showed classic response to a heart shot. Jumped in the air, kicked all 4 feet out then landed. Ran about 20 feet Staggered about backwards whilst rearing then fell down. I count that as DRT.
Normal practise is that you sit down, smoke a cigarette (if a smoker... i have not started smoking for this moment.) or have a coffee. But i had been too lazy to make the coffee earlier... as we have already covered! I shoot lots of deer. I have the experience to diagnose the heart shot. I knew the animal was dead. The thought process is that in the 20 minutes or so you take to smoke the cigarette and have a coffee your deer has bled out and died... you dont end up chasing a wounded deer all round the woods. A deer doesn't have to go far into dense woods before it is very hard to find.
As i made my way forward i saw these paint splashes. These are good for novices to see. They are bubbly and have bits of lung in them.
I got in a bit closer and saw that i had hit him exactly where i wamted him.
the exit point was lower on his opposite shoulder... must have been due to the trotting action.
The rifle gives a good idea of the size of the roe buck.
He has a pretty good head... although one of his antlers has no front tine. Thats unusual amongst roe buck. But the second one on this ground this year. I suppose it could be genetic.
This picture is the contents of my bag
I carried out a quick gralloch, did my normal DSC checks. I then Hung him in a tree (nice little deer) so it could bleed out nicely then went to get the car.
When i got home i did the larder prep on the carcass and when i removed the red offal i was able to get a decent look at the heart.
Thats a heart shot for you!
So the liver is in my fridge for tea (dinner in your language) the carcass is cooling and drying in the garage, tomorrow it will go to the big chiller for a week prior to butchering.
There we go a quick insight into British woodland roe stalking.
steve
