Write Ups

Write ups of your recent trips and event reports.
Some years back I bought a Frosts hidden tang knife blank and always intended to make a handle out of the antler we inevitably accrue over time. Sadly I did not store the blade as well as I might and its high carbon finish has two corrosion blooms which have eaten into the surfaces a little deeper than can be removed with a superficial polishing. But I decided to proceed anyway as I am sure the blade will give good service. It takes a razor edge verrrrry quickly. Below are the sum of tonight's efforts. Once epoxy has hardened, I will trim and polish handle and post another image. Project #2 will be to make a sheath. Leather or kydex? Inspiration to make the knife came from a decade old Ray Mears record of various Scandinavian...
I arranged a long weekend with my regular clients to visit my long time friend Lee (ex member Norfolk Deer Search), the target, as many deer that we could manage to cull, no limit on numbers, this was culling, full stop, all high seat work (it's so flat!) except for myself and a friend who knew the area well. Friday evening started well, several roe/muntjac/cwd culled, in fact one guy shot a potential gold medal, his first CWD! Saturday morning/evening followed the same and the numbers were rising, filling Lee's larder, so after a Sunday morning stalk we did some skinning and butchery. Sunday evening, we were all WhatsApp messaging, reds had arrived, 22 hinds, none presenting a shot, 8 stags in another area, one had cast, 6 were...
Hi all All good things come to those who wait, and I'm over the bloody moon! This all started when my 6.5x55 started to throw the first shot by anything up to 2" top right and then spot on. I'd tried it clean, dirty, with and without the mod and a different scope and mounts. I'd completely lost confidence in the rifle and it was time to decide whay to do. Being left handed.....yer, not a great choice out there so decide to keep the rifle and get it rebarreled, something I've not done before. I messaged our very own @Ronin who agreed to take on the project. What was originally going to be a basic rebarreled at first, soon got updated a couple of times when I had several weak moments 🤣 We ended up with a 22" Phoenix barrel in...
The day here in Moray, Scotland started well, nice clear morning at 5am with a gentle warm breeze. I met my mentor Frank who has been taking me out showing me the ropes and we headed off to the permission. Upon arriving we saw three deer in the field but they soon jumped down the banking onto the neighbouring land. As we went for a walk up the hill we heard a couple of twigs snap ad Bang within a couple of seconds Frank had the rifle on the quad sticks and taken the first deer! After I collected the deer and we did a quick field gralloch we continued on foot for around 100m when we spot a roe in the field on the fence line, it was finally my turn. After waiting a couple of minutes I thought the deer were about to present me a...
This is a tale of bloody-mindedness that ends in heroic failure. There are no trophy pictures at the end. Just wind-generated tears, sweat and mud. Lots and lots of mud. A few days after Christmas I set out to blow off the cobwebs and try to fill the freezer with CWD as the American in-laws were over for Christmas and five additional fully grown Americans changes the logistics quite seriously. Or at least that was a plausible enough excuse. So I set off early for the Newport-Pagnell area to meet my host, with gales buffeting the car on the motorway. Storm Dave or whatever that one was called. I’ve been stalking here a few times and the ground is very open fields with a few hedges, ditches, and essentially no cover apart from using the...
my mate called me to say he is seeing a couple of foxes hanging round the lambing shed this week.we have already shot 8 just before he started lambing a fortnight ago. we arrived in the farm yard at 8 pm on Friday and set up on a couple of ton bags with pallets on top,just like " bench rest" shooting. straight away a fox in the thermal on the lower field,but in clear view through the tree's so no shot.one of the few disadvantages of thermal,cover in the way😩.it just wandered off up the hedge. so we decided to nip across the road to where another one had been seen.we duly unloaded the rifle and put it in a case to cross the public highway 😆. over the road we set up on a round bale feeder, brilliant rest.thermaled a fox coming across the...
Hunting the Barbary Sheep is a unique experience, in Spain we can enjoy this animal that was introduced from Morocco and is hardly found in other countries in Europe. I am going to leave you the story of one of the hardest hunts that we experienced with a client after these animals. We arrived very early at the hunting ground, very hot dates and we have to take advantage of the coolness of the night before dawn and the sun begins to heat up. It is very curious, how unlike other animals that take advantage of the first and last lights of the day to move, the barbary sheep or "Arrui" as we call it here, moves during the hottest hours of the day. It is amazing to see them eating at 40 degrees Celsius under the sun in rocky mountains with...
This is my first hunting experience with a client/hunter from the UK. John was really looking forward to this trip, so I prepared it so that everything would go according to plan, or above expectations if possible. We would try to hunt a Gredos ibex and a mouflon. I picked John up from Madrid airport on Tuesday afternoon and we drove to the Gredos mountains. Once there and after a short rest at the hotel, we enjoyed a delicious dinner with top quality local meat and other typical Spanish dishes, accompanied by Spanish red wine and beer. The next morning, we got up early to start hunting almost at sunrise, and it was not long before we saw the first ibex in Gredos. They were young animals that did not coincide with what we were...
So was out Friday evening looking for a Rudolph then from out of nowhere appeared the crop spraying machine (bugger) when he finally left I’d near lost the light managed to spot five roe in the field with the vintage thermal all presenting the rear end towards me in the distance a house so called it a day ,so back out on Saturday evening pulled up had a look around 2 Rudolph’s spotted 50 yard ahead crept out of my truck got the Blaser out super quite about to take aim then a voice from nowhere are you looking for deer mate (thanks for that you tw#t) no I’m not mate just taking my gun for a walk ,by the time I’d got rid of him I’d lost the light .So this evening home from work at four weather not looking too good but the weather app said...
Why is it after a good stalk I get a simple 100yard shot and FREAKING miss? Why is it a short time later I get an opportunity at just 40 yards and I get a FREAKING BIG "CLICK"!!! Then, why is it right on the edge of to dark do I get yet another opportunity and drop a buck but this time it's a 140 yarder and in a muddy maize stubble field, thankfully sans of any slurry. It couldn't be the earlier easy two could it, oh no it's just got to be the hardest of the lot. 😤 Rant over it is another young knobber so should be nice and it was good to finally get on them. Think I've seen about 20+ again. Thanks to @alberta boy that scope sure has made things easier 🙏. Bloody hard work aren't they 🥵.
So I have been on the hunt for an airgun for my nephew for a little bit now. He recently turned 13 and has outgrown the little junior synth stocked springer I got for him a few years back. It has done a sterling job as an introduction to rifle shooting for him but it is low on power, has an impossibly heavy trigger (which is good from a safety point of view though) and overall serves no real purpose for him now. He is not a small 13yr old but neither is he big. Just typically at that age where the little gun is too small but adult rifles are too big. I was looking for an S200 or a BSA ultra. Something smaller and lighter so he could carry it around more easily. I found a few here and there but they were really just too nice or...
Local ground this evening (abt 5 mins) which keeps a good contact with the farmer as they are miles away, always a few partridges kicking around who raise a brood which is hard enough with out the foxes. Lots of muntjac tracks with a larger set mixed in had me thinking what time is he passing by!! A small spiny is a draw for muntjac and foxes which is a leap of faith over the full ditch at the moment, a fait muntjac shape in the thermal had me scrabbling over as the land is split by this ditch with me spending time back and forth looking for a chance. 25 mins later no show as muntjac just keep going so I headed back to the ditch still thinking what time this buck turned up! One last look before I got over was this buck standing...
Life has been busy and I've not been out anywhere near the amount I wanted to do when the Green light goes for a stalk I jump at the chance. I don't often stalk in the evenings but it made sense to today and remembering what happend last time I made sure to get to the farm earlier so as to be able to place myself between where the deer tend to go and where they come from. Got on a found 2 roe (doe and unconfirmed) skylined so no go, carried on and a nice little buck was feeding along the hedge away from me (got to about 50y) then he went through which was over the boundry I waited so as not to spoke him or anything else that may be there and then carried on. Also over the boundry the buck had joined a little unit of 3 other bucks and...
I had the pleasure of taking out a friend on his first stalk. A keen bird shooter, he’d shown an interest in stalking and rifle shooting in general so I offered to take him out. Trying to share my knowledge and experience of stalking we covered basic fieldcraft, shot safety and placement before heading out. On a previous visit I also ensured that he could shoot the rifle to an adequate standard in order to take an ethical shot. During our mooch we saw a few deer who didn’t provide a comfortable shot for him - as previously discussed, if you’re not comfortable, don’t shoot. We set up in an area that showed plenty of deer movement and got him comfortable where I taught him the number one tip when it comes to taking deer… patience...
So a while back i was reading through some of the write ups and came across a first deer post, in which someone said before long you'll be at 50, at that point i think i had shot 30 something. I thought once i get to 50 i'll do a little write up. Well here I am currently at 69 deer :lol: ! turns out life gets in the way and i havn't had time to sit down and write this 0-50, so it's now 0-69 Here's a little background on me, I have had my firearms over 10 years, up until 2 years ago I had one farm and a hand full of small parcels. in the 8 years I shot a few boar and foxes, but in the entire time i think i saw about 5 deer on the farm, either with .22 in hand not .308 or out of season. So I just focused on rabbits on the farm, i...
With everyone else at work 'working from home', I took the opportunity to get out in the windy, overcast and slightly-threatening-to-rain weather. Though it hasn't rained much in the past few days, the top layer of ground is still sodden in places, the little dips cross country threaten to bog in even the mighty Hilux. A strong westerly is blowing, so I dismount well away from my chosen area and stalk in, using the gorse, blackthorn and blackberry bushes to keep myself from being skylined on the walk in. I scan far ahead, into a shallow valley, convex grassy banks on either side, with a thin woodblock on either ridge. Bizarrely, I spot a Muntjac buck from about 400m out. He's merrily grazing his fill, out in the open, at just after...
So at the end of the game season it’s all go here to thin the roe deer out I was out 5 o’clock in the morning to hopefully get some browny points with the landowner so first location that is normally productive saw nothing so move on second location nothing again plenty of foot prints near the feeders so deer in the location it’s now approaching 9am I’m 1200 steps in moved on to third location I’ve been here three times the week before with the thermal and nothing any way onward and upwards .Arrived at third location deer spotted in a large group tried to get around them but bumped them they then split into three groups I singled this doe out job done
Hi guys, Ive been meaning to do this write up for a little while but Ive been in the process of moving so its taken a backseat. At the end of last year I managed to get back out to Africa for a fishing/hunting holiday. The first part of the trip was supposed to begin with a 4 day trip to the Eastern Cape from Joburg to hunt Vaalie's on horseback but due to bad weather we opted to head down to the free state for a few days and chase a lechwe and a gemsbok. The free state was something new for me and whilst it was good to experience it, I certainly wouldnt rush back there given the hunting available elsewhere in Southern Africa. However, over the few days in the free state we did have a good laugh and some great food. The red lecwhe...
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