After becoming interested in deer stalking a couple of year ago I embarked on the mission of finding somewhere to shoot. Luckily I already rented the game shooting on a small farm and the farmer agreed to also allow us to take the very occasional roe for the freezer (all we have is roe in the area). But as we are talking about just one or two animals per year I was still in the hunt for more ground.
I had a reasonable network of contacts in the farming and gamekeeping world but drew blank after blank with casual enquiries as to the deer stalking situation. If it was a farmer then they liked to see them around, afetr all roe do little damage to arable crops, if it was a gamekeeper then again the deer were either left alone or they were the 'keepers own perk.
Fortunately a friend was in a syndicate in SW Scotland and invited me to join, shooting over approximately 1000 aces. All was well at this time, there were enough deer and a good set up in the forest. Unfortunately for a variety of reasons the stalking was very very poor last year. So last autumn I bought a day in the midlands and had a great day, seeing alot of deer and putting a couple of opportunities in the larder. I am hoping for a bit more success from the syndicate ground this year as I get to know the ground and the habits of the deer better.
I suppose my question is how did you initailly break into the wonderful world of deerstalking, did you already have contacts, did you join a syndicate or buy individual days stalking etc??
I had a reasonable network of contacts in the farming and gamekeeping world but drew blank after blank with casual enquiries as to the deer stalking situation. If it was a farmer then they liked to see them around, afetr all roe do little damage to arable crops, if it was a gamekeeper then again the deer were either left alone or they were the 'keepers own perk.
Fortunately a friend was in a syndicate in SW Scotland and invited me to join, shooting over approximately 1000 aces. All was well at this time, there were enough deer and a good set up in the forest. Unfortunately for a variety of reasons the stalking was very very poor last year. So last autumn I bought a day in the midlands and had a great day, seeing alot of deer and putting a couple of opportunities in the larder. I am hoping for a bit more success from the syndicate ground this year as I get to know the ground and the habits of the deer better.
I suppose my question is how did you initailly break into the wonderful world of deerstalking, did you already have contacts, did you join a syndicate or buy individual days stalking etc??