Please expand on this Tim...the top of a tree?
Yes. The story of the deer in the tree.
I did do a bit of a write-up at the time, but never got around to posting it for some reason, so I may as well tell it here:
I shot the deer - a fallow pricket - across a river. The river runs through a deep, steep-sided valley, with a floodplain of about 400-500 yards wide.
So there was me on one bank of the river, and the deer grazing the floodplain on the other. I forget the distance of the shot now, but it was something between 175 and 200 yards I think. Certainly the longest shot I'd taken up to that stage (it was a few years ago now), but I felt comfortable in my position and the shot felt good. The deer reacted well to the impact and keeled over, disappearing out of site among the undergrowth surrounding a small oxbow lake.
Now, I call it a "lake", but that's something of an exaggeration. More a horseshoe shaped pool of stagnant ooze. You certainly wouldn't want to eat any deer that fell in it.
With the water level in the river running high I was unable to cross at the usual fording place, so in order to recover my deer I had to return to my vehicle, drive several miles around on the road (across the bridge) to another farm, park up, and then walk maybe 500 yds to the shot site. Which all takes time.
On the far bank of the "lake" the steep valley side takes the form of a sheer cliff, clearly eroded by the river many hundreds of years ago when it was following its old route that ultimately resulted in the formation of the oxbow. As I approached a movement caught my eye, and I spotted another deer halfway up the face of the cliff. Funny place to see a fallow, I thought. Behaving more like a mountain goat! Although it presented an easy target I refrained from shooting it as its body would clearly plunge straight down into the noxious filth of the pool below, and be unrecoverable.
I must've been feeling particularly dull-witted that day, as I was much closer to the cliff face before it suddenly dawned on me that it wasn't a different deer at all. It was my deer, wounded, making its way up the sheer face. Shortly it would reach the top, be briefly skylined, and then dissappear for good. I had to stop it in its tracks. Quickly.
I couldn't fathom out how to use my sticks to shoot upwards at such a steep angle, so I stealthily moved across to a small clump of scrub willows, and steadied myself against a convenient branch to take the shot. By this stage I couldn't care less about meat damage and just wanted to stop the deer, so I pinned it straight through the shoulders.
As if in slow motion I watched it tumble down, straight towards that evil-smelling pool of foul mud. But it never made it! About half way down its fall was arrested by the uppermost branches of a tree that hugged the face of the cliff!
Although relieved, I could see that this really was a case of "out of the frying pan and into the fire", as I now had to make something of a detour to find a place to get up the valley side and then walk along the top until I came to the cliff section, where hopefully I'd be able to recover my deer from above.
Drawing level, I peered over. It was quite a long way down.
I managed to climb down to the deer, leaving my rifle and backpack at the top but carrying my sticks and a small coil of rope, my plan being to attach the rope to the deer, climb back up with the free end, and then haul the deer up once I was on firm level ground.
(Now, you're probably all wondering why I didn't attach the free end of the rope to a tree at the top before climbing down, aren't you?
Well I just didn't. Second dull witted moment, I guess).
From my position on the cliff face I couldn't quite reach the deer in the tree, but I poked it with my sticks to make sure it was dead (it was), and then proceeded to use my sticks to position a noose of the rope around its neck. Job done, I gave a bit of a tug on the rope to tighten the noose before climbing back up with the free end, and at that moment the deer slipped and fell.
I was almost dragged off the cliff face, but not quite. I just managed to cling on, but with the dead weight of the deer pulling directly upon me, moving anywhere - other than rapidly downwards - was going to be challenging to say the least.
Slowly but surely I clawed my way back up the cliff, dragging the deer behind me, and using various small bits of shrubbery along the way to momentarily ease the load.
It seemed an age, but finally made it!
I gralloched the deer on the level ground at the top of the cliff, and then began the long drag back to my pickup.
I'd first shot the deer just after lunch, and it was 5pm by the time I had it safely stowed away in a carcass tray in the back of the vehicle.
) got me thinking about this.
Certainly a memorable outing thats for sure.
