So there's this amateur stalker I know - lovely bloke, sensible, decades of shooting experience, DSC.1, getting towards 100 solo deer to his credit, even carries the BASC "Closed Deer Seasons" card in his wallet - who decides on an outing yesterday.
He's reconnoitred one of his permissions and identified a group of roe that should be in an advantageous position for a shot at about 1500 hrs.
He arrives, and there they are, out on a ploughed and freshly-sown field. He stalks in to 250 yards, but can't get any closer without risk of being spotted; suddenly a tractor arrives on the neighbouring farm, and obligingly startles the roe which move in to 175 yards from him. Game on!
He glasses the group, and immediately spots a chunky young buck, antlers in velvet, at the left edge of the bevy, accompanied by 5 does. Buck. Antlers. Buck. Antlers. Buck...
Rifle up on the sticks, he uses the antlers as his Go/No Go guide. Crosshairs at mid-body, just behind the foreleg...
TIiish-pok!
The buck drops in his shadow. Not even a hind leg "bicycles." Our hero has a quiet preen at having achieved an instant, humane kill.
He drags the buck several hundred yards upslope to a plantation in which he's previously prepared a tree branch for a suspended gralloch. He accomplishes what is for him an exemplary job: "Hoop to snoot" in a one-er.
Only as he's removing the buck's wedding tackle does the awful realisation hit him between the eyes: He's just coolly, calmly and deliberately PID'd a roe buck, then shot it out of season despite its having been accompanied by no fewer than five eligible does...
Well, I can state emphatically that he's learned a lesson: Don't go on to Autopilot when stalking.
Of course, none of us ace stalkers would ever ever drop a b*****k like that, would we, lads?
Lads?
Anyone?
maximus otter
He's reconnoitred one of his permissions and identified a group of roe that should be in an advantageous position for a shot at about 1500 hrs.
He arrives, and there they are, out on a ploughed and freshly-sown field. He stalks in to 250 yards, but can't get any closer without risk of being spotted; suddenly a tractor arrives on the neighbouring farm, and obligingly startles the roe which move in to 175 yards from him. Game on!
He glasses the group, and immediately spots a chunky young buck, antlers in velvet, at the left edge of the bevy, accompanied by 5 does. Buck. Antlers. Buck. Antlers. Buck...
Rifle up on the sticks, he uses the antlers as his Go/No Go guide. Crosshairs at mid-body, just behind the foreleg...
TIiish-pok!
The buck drops in his shadow. Not even a hind leg "bicycles." Our hero has a quiet preen at having achieved an instant, humane kill.
He drags the buck several hundred yards upslope to a plantation in which he's previously prepared a tree branch for a suspended gralloch. He accomplishes what is for him an exemplary job: "Hoop to snoot" in a one-er.
Only as he's removing the buck's wedding tackle does the awful realisation hit him between the eyes: He's just coolly, calmly and deliberately PID'd a roe buck, then shot it out of season despite its having been accompanied by no fewer than five eligible does...
Well, I can state emphatically that he's learned a lesson: Don't go on to Autopilot when stalking.
Of course, none of us ace stalkers would ever ever drop a b*****k like that, would we, lads?
Lads?
Anyone?
maximus otter
Last edited:
