So we started our evening over the far side of the shoot, the piggeries drives, not long after getting set up a small group of fallow came out from the tree line 4 doe’s and 2 pricketts, not having the time to deal with a deer, we let them be, still a lovely thing for the lad to see, now we spent a good hour here trying all the usual calls and as we lost the light we hadn’t seen anything so I decided to move to the bottom of the field at the back of the farm, by this time we had lost the light, so we set up alongside a bale in the middle of the field with our backs to the wood, with in 5 minutes a fox had appeared to our right, winded us and disappeared into the wood, caller on and it was less than 5 minutes and I spotted another almost at the top of the field near the farm, but it was slowly making its way down the field, mousing as it went. It would sometimes disappear for a few minutes behind a bale, not showing any interest in the caller that was approximately 45 yards from us, it was a good 30 minutes before it turned onto the rat death call and ran towards the caller, I had to stop it with a whistle before it reached the caller, lights out for this chap, explaining to the lad the we now wait to see if there’s more than one it was less than 5 minutes before another presented half way up the field along my oak wood drive, again, showing interest in the rat call but would not commit and stayed out at a good 90 yards, giving the opportunity by sitting and looking in the direction of the caller down it went, the first was a dog ( cub ) and the second was a vixen, I’m pretty sure they are from the same litter, hopefully there’ll be a few more over the coming week as the birds are here on Thursday
Some might think that an 8 year old lad shouldn’t be out doing what we are doing at the time we are doing it, but I would say, stick it up your pipe, that lad has learned more spending the day with me and coming out this evening than any kid sat in front of a screen, we have watched deer and hares, listened to owls and found owl pellets on top of the bales, looked at the stars and even seen a couple of shooting stars which he had never seen before and was amazed by them
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