I took a lad out with me this evening called Matt who is an SD member (Giddystoat) and a friend of a friend, he is fairly new to stalking and has only managed to take about 5 deer and never managed to shoot a Red so i said i would try and get him onto one. We met in the agreed place and he jumped in with me and off we went. When we arrived at the field in question we got out and got ourselves together and off we went. We passed through the gate into the field and glassed the field before we stalked the full length of it to the high seat, 200 yards down the field there was a Roe buck browsing on the headland of the Wheat field. This presented a problem as we had to pass it to get to the seat! I was happy that it was plenty early enough to try the buck and still have the time to sort things out before the Reds would show so i gave it a few peeps with the buttalo, the buck seemed to show little interest and slowly walked to the left and out of sight behind a couple of trees, we waited an couple of minutes and approached, as we took a few steps forward the buck showed and was coming straight towards us! I gave a few more peeps and it exploded towards us at a crazy pace! By now we had sunk down low in the long grass of the headland, at around 5 yards away it decided to stop and look straight at us before passing us and stopping again at about 10 yards when Matt shot it through the neck dropping it dead on the spot! It turned out to be a cracking 6 point buck that we were both very happy with. We dealt with it and stalked on to the high seat where we sat for ages watching the pigeons dropping in and gorging themselves on the wheat (they will come another day) after an hour or so i looked back to my left to see a Red deer had showed from the wood and was grazing on the edge of the field, it was hard to see what it was as the trees had lots of low branches and i could'nt see it clearly. After a while i could see it was a Hind and Calve. Another 20 minutes or so passed when i looked down to see that a pricket had come out from the wood and was grazing away at about 40 yards! We decided to leave it for a few minutes to try and let it come out a bit further as the high seat is very high and the shot could have been a little awkward due to the angle, it was'nt long though and he sensed something was wrong and i could see he was going to make off if we were'nt quick, I gave Matt the go ahead and he got a shot off before the pricket decided where to go. The shot did'nt give any thump indicating a solid impact and the deer made no reaction which concerned me a little as Matt was sure the shot was good. The deer bolted back into the wood and vanished. We sat tight for a few minutes before approaching the site of the shot where i found bright frothy blood indicating a lung shot which was good to see, we followed the spots of blood back into the wood for around 60 yards and there was Matts first Red deer stone dead in the long foliage shot nicely through the lung and still hit the heart due to the steep angle of the shot. Matt was over the moon with the evening and so was i, it was great to see someone break their duck and i would just like to thank him for the evening as he is a great lad and i enjoyed his company. I was hoping to get him a shot so to get him 2 was a real spot of luck.
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