This story began a little more than 30 years ago. On a hot summer day two school boys sat on a shed roof under a cool Beech tree armed with an air rifle and a bottle of cheap whiskey purchased from a corner shop which didn't practise age related discrimination. That was me and my mate Jez back in the days when we were just at the very beginning of learning about most of the things worth knowing. The aim of that afternoon was to get Jez a first squirrel.
Maybe it was the whiskey, maybe it was just that we didn't know a lot about shooting but the squirrel proved quite hard to get. When it was finally dead, we made the mistake of trying to cook the squirrel on a camp fire. Squirrel can be delicious but we hadn't yet learned how to make fire properly and the paraffin that we liberally applied to start the fire tainted the meat horribly. From a fieldcraft, marksmanship, and culinary point of view, the outing provided a long list of things to avoid or do better. However the crucial part -the fun- had been there. A fond memory was created on two young minds. To be fired by the spark of adventure is far more precious for the young than achieving success itself. A flame kindled in young hearts can live for many years burning hotter and cleaner as subsequent adventures add more and better fuel.
The years rolled forwards and we went to university together, signed up to the UOTC together and there took the first steps of learning to shoot together. Then we learned to climb rocks together. After university we even climbed a faraway mountain together that no one had ever climbed before. After the successful climb and back in a local town Jez tells me (I have entirely forgotten), that we quarrelled bitterly over a tin of fruit left over from expedition supplies. Small things can become big when you are tired and far from home, particularly when you still have a lot to learn about the importance of generosity in human relationships. For some reason, Jez later told me, he took this squabble to heart. Perhaps we had just spent too long in each other's pockets. Any how, as our working lives got going, we drifted apart. Jez made a career in selling high end alcohol and I made a life working on trees. I ended up poor and hard working with my spare time filled with my children. Jez ended up living a fancy free bachelor life swapping jobs at will, seeing the world but never settling with any of his ladies. However, what is dyed in the wool doesn't wash out easily and we eventually drifted back into regular conversation and visited each other from time to time. I asked Jez to be god father to one of my daughters and he proved to be the best of godfathers. He never missed a birthday or Christmas and several times a year he would arrive at my local train station on a Friday afternoon to see his goddaughter and to spend a weekend diverting himself away from London. Whatever bad character I had shown over the tin of fruit that I can't remember was behind us.
Weekends with Jez took on a familiar pattern. On Friday evenings he would unload a large number of choice bottles from his travelling bag and urge my wife and I to try them. On Saturday morning we would get up early and see what we could find in the woods. Jez would play with the children the rest of Saturday. On Saturday evening my wife would cook some of whatever we had found in the woods and on Sunday Jez would take the rest of it back with him so that his fine dining London pals could enthuse over the fresh wild meat. The following Saturday evening I would usually get a photo of some exquisite looking dish they had stayed in and cooked using the meat. At first I shot and he watched but gradually I began to realise it could be more fun the other way around.
Jez is not an experienced shot but he knows his way around guns and so long as I could give him plenty of time to compose himself, results were good. The trouble with woodland hunting is that sometimes you don't get often that long to compose yourself and for this reason, we kept away from the deer at first. When all trips are averaged out, one probably gets less than one chance per outing when it comes to woodland deer and if you take too long to compose yourself, you return empty handed. However, once we had eaten just about everything apart from foxes and crows that you can legally shoot in a wood, it eventually became time to get Jez a first deer.
Last year at the end of July I got a message from Jez asking if he could come down across his birthday on the 31st. It was clear that all the stars lined up for Jez to get a first deer. The bucks would be a little bolder and might stay a little longer in the rut. We could go out on the Roe rut on his birthday, sit in a high seat where he would have a solid rest and get Jez a birthday Roe buck. I regretted that the day before he texted I had shot the big buck I had been watching for a couple of years. However, I doubted that I had frightened the doe that much. There was every possibility that she would be hanging out with some spare guy. So on Saturday night we drank Jez' fine wines, then we slept in on the Sunday morning and went out at a lazy 10.00. We went to a high seat in a flat fairly open area, that I hoped might be attractive to courting Roe.
As we sat in the seat with my rifle and Jez' hipflask of fine Islay malt I realised that we practically come full circle. The two of us were again sat up high in the shade of trees on a blazing sunny day with whisky and a rifle. I hoped that what we had learned in the years that had passed might bear fruit. After half an hour to let things settle, I made a few pheeps and we waited with baited breath. It may have been the squeaks or it may have simply been the gods smiling on us but within a couple of minutes a buck and doe materialised from the edge of the conifers bordering the shooting area that I kept cleared. It was the big healthy doe that I knew owned the territory thereabout. The buck, however, was a younger chap, a "spare guy" type no doubt revelling in the mysterious disappearance of the alpha type who had held the territory probably as long as he could recall. Did he really drag her over there to investigate the possibility of another doe or was she wondering who was in her territory and heading over to investigate, pulling him with her? Was it just fluke they came this way because they were clearly very much into each other.
Jez cocked the Blaser and I whispered to him to shoot the buck as soon as he stood still. The two deer seemed advanced in their courtship. The doe wasn't going anywhere, so I held off the squeaking. She ran small circles and then paused. He walked behind her. When she paused, he paused, his nose almost on her tail. "Shoot" I would whisper every time she stopped but Jez had never quite composed himself enough by the time they moved on. Eventually they moved to the edge of the conifers, where she paused long and let him mount her. I couldn't tell how Jez was getting on but the hair was standing up on the back of my neck on this hot summer day. It was the perfect hunt. We had watched the Roe courtship come to its natural climax and now all Jez had to do was squeeze that trigger to take our hunt to its perfect end. But he still didn't gather himself fast enough. After mating the buck wandered of a little and lay down in the dark at the edge of the conifers for a well earned rest.
It took me a while to locate his small antlers sillhouetted amongst the sticks and twigs of the woodland edge. Using landmarks, I talked Jez carefully to the antlers. "Now this time, when he gets up you have to shoot him."
After about 5 minutes, the buck rose, stood and sniffed the air. Time dragged out inch by inch in exquisite agony, while I repeated "Go on, go on, shoot" in my mind. Finally I was relieved to hear the shot and watch the buck kick high and vanish. Jez carefully set the rifle down from his trembling hand. "I don't know..." he said in a hushed voice. "You got him" I replied.
Jez then got to experience the stretching of time as we made the obligatory pause before going to look. We sat back, took in the bright sunshine filled woodland and took a small sip of Jez' smoky malt. Much better left till after the shot. We had come a long way from the shed roof. After I was confident that the doe had gone well away to contemplate why she proved fatal to her lovers I said "I think he was dead seconds after you shot. There's no point waiting any more, go get him" We went forward. There was a huge scarlet splash where the buck had stood. I called Jez, so he could follow the trail to his buck but as I did, I realised the buck was lying barely a bound or two away from the splash, shot perfectly through the heart.
"I want to do everything" Jez said. So he did. Jez had helped me with deer several times before so he needed little guidance to gut his buck in the woods. Later at home he butchered it all too, returning to London that evening with a whole Roe buck's worth of jointed and boned out meat in his bag.
I do not think I have ever had a more perfect hunt. I think that the boys that we were would have been proud to know that so long as they were patient and kept learning, they would in due course, properly finish what they started.
Maybe it was the whiskey, maybe it was just that we didn't know a lot about shooting but the squirrel proved quite hard to get. When it was finally dead, we made the mistake of trying to cook the squirrel on a camp fire. Squirrel can be delicious but we hadn't yet learned how to make fire properly and the paraffin that we liberally applied to start the fire tainted the meat horribly. From a fieldcraft, marksmanship, and culinary point of view, the outing provided a long list of things to avoid or do better. However the crucial part -the fun- had been there. A fond memory was created on two young minds. To be fired by the spark of adventure is far more precious for the young than achieving success itself. A flame kindled in young hearts can live for many years burning hotter and cleaner as subsequent adventures add more and better fuel.
The years rolled forwards and we went to university together, signed up to the UOTC together and there took the first steps of learning to shoot together. Then we learned to climb rocks together. After university we even climbed a faraway mountain together that no one had ever climbed before. After the successful climb and back in a local town Jez tells me (I have entirely forgotten), that we quarrelled bitterly over a tin of fruit left over from expedition supplies. Small things can become big when you are tired and far from home, particularly when you still have a lot to learn about the importance of generosity in human relationships. For some reason, Jez later told me, he took this squabble to heart. Perhaps we had just spent too long in each other's pockets. Any how, as our working lives got going, we drifted apart. Jez made a career in selling high end alcohol and I made a life working on trees. I ended up poor and hard working with my spare time filled with my children. Jez ended up living a fancy free bachelor life swapping jobs at will, seeing the world but never settling with any of his ladies. However, what is dyed in the wool doesn't wash out easily and we eventually drifted back into regular conversation and visited each other from time to time. I asked Jez to be god father to one of my daughters and he proved to be the best of godfathers. He never missed a birthday or Christmas and several times a year he would arrive at my local train station on a Friday afternoon to see his goddaughter and to spend a weekend diverting himself away from London. Whatever bad character I had shown over the tin of fruit that I can't remember was behind us.
Weekends with Jez took on a familiar pattern. On Friday evenings he would unload a large number of choice bottles from his travelling bag and urge my wife and I to try them. On Saturday morning we would get up early and see what we could find in the woods. Jez would play with the children the rest of Saturday. On Saturday evening my wife would cook some of whatever we had found in the woods and on Sunday Jez would take the rest of it back with him so that his fine dining London pals could enthuse over the fresh wild meat. The following Saturday evening I would usually get a photo of some exquisite looking dish they had stayed in and cooked using the meat. At first I shot and he watched but gradually I began to realise it could be more fun the other way around.
Jez is not an experienced shot but he knows his way around guns and so long as I could give him plenty of time to compose himself, results were good. The trouble with woodland hunting is that sometimes you don't get often that long to compose yourself and for this reason, we kept away from the deer at first. When all trips are averaged out, one probably gets less than one chance per outing when it comes to woodland deer and if you take too long to compose yourself, you return empty handed. However, once we had eaten just about everything apart from foxes and crows that you can legally shoot in a wood, it eventually became time to get Jez a first deer.
Last year at the end of July I got a message from Jez asking if he could come down across his birthday on the 31st. It was clear that all the stars lined up for Jez to get a first deer. The bucks would be a little bolder and might stay a little longer in the rut. We could go out on the Roe rut on his birthday, sit in a high seat where he would have a solid rest and get Jez a birthday Roe buck. I regretted that the day before he texted I had shot the big buck I had been watching for a couple of years. However, I doubted that I had frightened the doe that much. There was every possibility that she would be hanging out with some spare guy. So on Saturday night we drank Jez' fine wines, then we slept in on the Sunday morning and went out at a lazy 10.00. We went to a high seat in a flat fairly open area, that I hoped might be attractive to courting Roe.
As we sat in the seat with my rifle and Jez' hipflask of fine Islay malt I realised that we practically come full circle. The two of us were again sat up high in the shade of trees on a blazing sunny day with whisky and a rifle. I hoped that what we had learned in the years that had passed might bear fruit. After half an hour to let things settle, I made a few pheeps and we waited with baited breath. It may have been the squeaks or it may have simply been the gods smiling on us but within a couple of minutes a buck and doe materialised from the edge of the conifers bordering the shooting area that I kept cleared. It was the big healthy doe that I knew owned the territory thereabout. The buck, however, was a younger chap, a "spare guy" type no doubt revelling in the mysterious disappearance of the alpha type who had held the territory probably as long as he could recall. Did he really drag her over there to investigate the possibility of another doe or was she wondering who was in her territory and heading over to investigate, pulling him with her? Was it just fluke they came this way because they were clearly very much into each other.
Jez cocked the Blaser and I whispered to him to shoot the buck as soon as he stood still. The two deer seemed advanced in their courtship. The doe wasn't going anywhere, so I held off the squeaking. She ran small circles and then paused. He walked behind her. When she paused, he paused, his nose almost on her tail. "Shoot" I would whisper every time she stopped but Jez had never quite composed himself enough by the time they moved on. Eventually they moved to the edge of the conifers, where she paused long and let him mount her. I couldn't tell how Jez was getting on but the hair was standing up on the back of my neck on this hot summer day. It was the perfect hunt. We had watched the Roe courtship come to its natural climax and now all Jez had to do was squeeze that trigger to take our hunt to its perfect end. But he still didn't gather himself fast enough. After mating the buck wandered of a little and lay down in the dark at the edge of the conifers for a well earned rest.
It took me a while to locate his small antlers sillhouetted amongst the sticks and twigs of the woodland edge. Using landmarks, I talked Jez carefully to the antlers. "Now this time, when he gets up you have to shoot him."
After about 5 minutes, the buck rose, stood and sniffed the air. Time dragged out inch by inch in exquisite agony, while I repeated "Go on, go on, shoot" in my mind. Finally I was relieved to hear the shot and watch the buck kick high and vanish. Jez carefully set the rifle down from his trembling hand. "I don't know..." he said in a hushed voice. "You got him" I replied.
Jez then got to experience the stretching of time as we made the obligatory pause before going to look. We sat back, took in the bright sunshine filled woodland and took a small sip of Jez' smoky malt. Much better left till after the shot. We had come a long way from the shed roof. After I was confident that the doe had gone well away to contemplate why she proved fatal to her lovers I said "I think he was dead seconds after you shot. There's no point waiting any more, go get him" We went forward. There was a huge scarlet splash where the buck had stood. I called Jez, so he could follow the trail to his buck but as I did, I realised the buck was lying barely a bound or two away from the splash, shot perfectly through the heart.
"I want to do everything" Jez said. So he did. Jez had helped me with deer several times before so he needed little guidance to gut his buck in the woods. Later at home he butchered it all too, returning to London that evening with a whole Roe buck's worth of jointed and boned out meat in his bag.
I do not think I have ever had a more perfect hunt. I think that the boys that we were would have been proud to know that so long as they were patient and kept learning, they would in due course, properly finish what they started.
