My first buck of 2012

Jonher

Well-Known Member
My first buck of 2012 + Video

After several close encounters myself, my brother James and friend Steve decided to spend the evening sitting in high seats to maximise our chances. We arrived at the terrain early and after a quick coffee set off to quickly scan the local fields before collecting and repositioning a high seat at the edge of a beautiful block of forest overlooking a small valley which the deer use as a highway before entering into the larger fields to browse. High seat in place, James positioned himself in the new set-up whilst myself and Steve made our way to the edge of a crop field a few hundred meters away where countless deer have been seen and the same place where James took a young doe earlier in the year. Positioned in the high seats it wasn't long before I sighted deer but they were in fields about 500 meters away, at first I could only see one deer, but after a few minutes Steve spotted a second and then I spotted a third, this confirmed it was a doe we had seen previously with twins from last year, both does. We continued to scan the fields in the immediate vicinity for a few hours but the only activity seemed to be from the hares and pheasants, this was fantastic in itself so I took the opportunity to get a little bit of footage.



All of a sudden Steve indicated that he has seen a buck run across the lower part of the crop field amongst the rapeseed, by the time I had got my binoculars up the buck had disappeared and was nowhere to be seen. Steve had a good idea of the bucks behaviour and as we had not seen it cross over into the other fields where we had spotted the does, he was confident it would use a small valley and plantation bordering the crop field and work its way towards us. After about 30 minutes of waiting Steve gave me the signal I had been waiting for, he had spotted the buck again and it was behind us, I carefully and slowly glanced round from my high seat and there was the buck on the other side of a small stream about 50 meters away in the valley, it had appeared as if by magic from the small block of plantation just as Steve had predicted. Now the adrenalin was pumping, I climbed down a couple of steps on the high seat and turned round so I could use the back of the high seat structure as a support, slowly I acquired the buck in my cross hairs but a clear shot never presented itself and the buck had now crossed the stream and was slowly crossing the valley heading for a block of forest. As the buck passed directly behind the high seat into my blind spot, I took the opportunity to position my camera ready for when he stepped out on the opposite side, camera in position and recording I got my rifle ready and waited for an opportunity to shoot.



As you can see from the video, I slowly waited for the buck to present a shot, the camera was positioned slightly to my right so when I took the shot on the video I had a better view of the buck. The shot at approx. 75 meters took out the heart of the buck going through the front shoulder and exiting behind the rear of the far shoulder, yet it still managed a dash to the other side of the small valley behind us. Myself and Steve got down from the high seat and made our way over to the buck, looking at the blood trail on the ground we knew it wasn't going to be far and we found it laying at the top of the valley after about a 30 meter dash, a beautiful little 6 pointer still in velvet. We knew there were better bucks in the area and the farmer wanted us to reduce the number so this was the perfect animal to take and my first roe deer with my Sauer 202 XT.

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Just wish I had remebered to take off my head scarf for the photo! :rolleyes: :lol:
 
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Lovely write and pics Jonathan, well done! What calibre is your Sauer?Tom

Thanks Tom,

It's a 30-06 and I use home rolled 200 grain Lapua Mega doing approx. 760m/s, I have shot munties and roe with this setup now and the accuracy is superb whilst meat damage is very little, think I've found the do it all load :D
 
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