tikka_madras
Well-Known Member
The recent thread on missed shots got me thinking about an incident a couple of weeks ago. Whilst knowing it probably won’t last for ever, I’ve previously privately prided myself (just a little, mind) on never having missed a shot or lost a wounded deer. Having said that, I don’t shoot at any great range, and I only take broadside shots as I’m just a recreational stalker with no pressure to make a cull.
At a cricket match in the process of being rained off I ran into a friendly acquaintance of mine from a shoot I’ve been on a few times, who started complaining that the deer had been in his garden eating valuable things that his wife had just planted. ‘They’ve been in mine too’ I said ‘and I’m thinking of putting up a high seat behind the peas’.
He farms about three hundred acres, but despite dropping a couple of hints I’ve never got a sniff of a permission to stalk there as apparently his father (or grandfather) had some sort of agreement with a now elderly gentleman who almost never turns up and in fact might be dead. The impression I got is that the deer aren’t really shot anymore as a result. He had seemed quite laissez-faire about them before, or possibly a bit evasive about the subject with me being a rather unknown quantity, but when they ate his wife’s prized garden plants and he realised how much it would cost to replace them he seemed to undergo a change of heart into a determined and stone-cold deer killer. ‘They’ve got to go,’ he said ‘there’s way too many of them, do you want to shoot a few?’. ‘Well, do I?’, I asked myself. ‘Yes’, said my brain, ‘that would be very agreeable.’ I got my permission emailed over and celebrated quietly. I told him I’d be there on Saturday morning.
He said he’d come with me for a bit to see how many were about then leave me to it so I arranged to meet him at his place shortly before dawn. ‘Shall I come to the house?’ I asked. ‘Don’t be daft’ he said, ‘the wife will kill both of us if you wake her up at that time. I’ll meet you where we park for the first wood drive, what time do you want to start?’
Well, come forty five minutes before dawn and I’m sitting in the Landy in the pitch black wondering where he’s got to. Time ticks by and the dawn gets closer and closer. ‘The lazy bugger’s probably still asleep’ I thought.
I don’t know the gate code to the main drive so I decided to get kitted up and start walking over the couple of fields between the car and the house as I can see his front door most of the way. As I reached the last hedge before his house, and there was still no sign of life, I hesitated and tried to work out how to wake him up without waking his wife. Was a phone call best? Throw gravel at the windows? But which one? Ring the doorbell and take the risk? Scream like a fox and hope he wakes up?
While I was trying to make up my mind/summon up some courage, I took out the thermal I’d brought for him to do some spotting with (I finally caved at Christmas and bought one, but just for spotting in our woods when I’m walking the dog at night – at least, that’s what I told myself) and started playing with it killing time trying to get black hot setting. I got a focus on the farmhouse, dimly outlined against the misty background, and as I lowered the little unit all of a sudden I saw the clear black shadow of a buck standing 100 yards away looking at me. ‘I’m sure it can’t see me,’ I thought, ‘standing here on the other side of this hedge’, so I slowly lifted my binoculars in my other hand and tried to make it out in the gloom. It was a bloody good buck, which really should be left for the rut, but in any case it was standing directly in front of my new best friend’s house and no shot was on. ‘Well at least it would wake him up,’ I thought, ‘a bullet through the bedroom window’. I watched it for a bit then thought that was my decision made for me. Rather than spook the buck, I backed away and decided to go stalking on my own and let the lazy bugger sleep.
I made my way back up to the car then started stalking along the woodland edge into what little wind there was, and felt that great stalker’s joy in the plant life around me, the fresh spring smells and even the inconvenient occasional pigeons noisily clattering off from the trees as I tried to creep silently down the woodland edge.
Past the wood there is a very long field in the bottom of the valley, maybe 200 yards across and the land rises beyond it to another pheasant drive from a cover crop at the top of the hill. There is a good place to cross the barbed wire fences where the beaters have tied an old feed sack round the top strand of wire, and I thought it would make a good vantage point to glass the rest of the farm.
I slowly stalked up an old broken hedge line that drops down from the wood and intersects about halfway along the long field, stopping to glass the fields beyond. Glory be, right in front of me in the long field I spotted a pair of roe grazing happily 100 yards past the fence, slightly hidden from me by a couple of trees. I stalked up behind the trees, and had a good look at them in the meadow grass through binoculars. There was a doe and a young buck, and the buck was exactly right for a cull. I set up my rifle on sticks (a set of Limulus’s finest quad sticks, if you’re interested) and edged the whole contraption slowly out sideways from behind the trees. The deer were completely unaware of me and not going anywhere, so with all the time in the world and no immediate chest shot on I started slowing my breath as I watched the crosshairs gradually settle down. The buck turned as he grazed, and very slowly made his way round until he was broadside on. I didn’t think about the shot, in fact I was almost surprised when the rifle went off. The recoil off the sticks caused me to lose sight of the buck through the scope as I reloaded, but my eyes caught the movement as the doe and buck ran off away and to the right across the field. ‘Good shot’ I thought to myself, and waited for the buck to fall. But it didn’t. It ran on and lots of hideous thoughts ran suddenly through my head. Had I heard the strike? Was now my time to miss? Had I knocked the scope out of alignment at some point? I thought back to the sight picture when the rifle went off and I thought to myself ‘that was a good shot - should be a dead deer’. At the far side of the field the doe unexpectedly stopped and turned back, and the buck stopped just behind her where I couldn’t see him properly, maybe 200 yards away. He didn’t seem injured, but I wasn’t sure and it wasn’t too far for a shot on quad sticks. I lined the shot up and waited for the doe to move. As soon as she moved enough to show me his chest, the rifle went off for a second time and the buck sprang high and pronked twenty yards before collapsing at the edge of the field.
‘Well it wasn’t the rifle the first time’ I thought. ‘Must have been me.’ I felt a bit embarrassed the miss had finally happened, and a bit confused because I couldn’t see how, and a bit happy (I got a buck, and nobody saw the miss!), and a tiny bit disoriented with my emotions swirling round. I waited a full five minutes to let him die and myself settle as I chewed over what had just happened. Through the binoculars I watched the doe, which had stopped in the open gateway to the field beyond, looking back and while I couldn’t see her expression I was certain it was recrimination, and in my moment of weakness I felt a bit like a murderer.
Eventually, I set off across the field towards the far hedgeline where the buck had fallen. And bugger me, I walked right over him stone dead in the middle of the field. After about a second of confusion of how he got all the way back here to die, I realised there must have been two different bucks. Presumably the first had fallen almost on top of his brother who was probably lying in the grass and who had run at the rifle report. When I first saw the two grazing deer it had simply never occurred to me there might have been a third out of sight. Well, two hard and horribly sweaty drags uphill to the edge of the field later, and who do I see sauntering down from the farmyard looking fresh and showered? ‘Hello’ he says, ‘well done, would love to help you but I need to go out to see someone. I overslept, you see, and I’m a bit late.’
Cursing him, but quite gratefully, I gralloched them then realised I'd forgotten to ask for the gate code so would have to carry them all the way out. And the roe sack was still in the car. Five trips later and a very tired but happy stalker made his way home, had a cup of tea and went back to bed.
At a cricket match in the process of being rained off I ran into a friendly acquaintance of mine from a shoot I’ve been on a few times, who started complaining that the deer had been in his garden eating valuable things that his wife had just planted. ‘They’ve been in mine too’ I said ‘and I’m thinking of putting up a high seat behind the peas’.
He farms about three hundred acres, but despite dropping a couple of hints I’ve never got a sniff of a permission to stalk there as apparently his father (or grandfather) had some sort of agreement with a now elderly gentleman who almost never turns up and in fact might be dead. The impression I got is that the deer aren’t really shot anymore as a result. He had seemed quite laissez-faire about them before, or possibly a bit evasive about the subject with me being a rather unknown quantity, but when they ate his wife’s prized garden plants and he realised how much it would cost to replace them he seemed to undergo a change of heart into a determined and stone-cold deer killer. ‘They’ve got to go,’ he said ‘there’s way too many of them, do you want to shoot a few?’. ‘Well, do I?’, I asked myself. ‘Yes’, said my brain, ‘that would be very agreeable.’ I got my permission emailed over and celebrated quietly. I told him I’d be there on Saturday morning.
He said he’d come with me for a bit to see how many were about then leave me to it so I arranged to meet him at his place shortly before dawn. ‘Shall I come to the house?’ I asked. ‘Don’t be daft’ he said, ‘the wife will kill both of us if you wake her up at that time. I’ll meet you where we park for the first wood drive, what time do you want to start?’
Well, come forty five minutes before dawn and I’m sitting in the Landy in the pitch black wondering where he’s got to. Time ticks by and the dawn gets closer and closer. ‘The lazy bugger’s probably still asleep’ I thought.
I don’t know the gate code to the main drive so I decided to get kitted up and start walking over the couple of fields between the car and the house as I can see his front door most of the way. As I reached the last hedge before his house, and there was still no sign of life, I hesitated and tried to work out how to wake him up without waking his wife. Was a phone call best? Throw gravel at the windows? But which one? Ring the doorbell and take the risk? Scream like a fox and hope he wakes up?
While I was trying to make up my mind/summon up some courage, I took out the thermal I’d brought for him to do some spotting with (I finally caved at Christmas and bought one, but just for spotting in our woods when I’m walking the dog at night – at least, that’s what I told myself) and started playing with it killing time trying to get black hot setting. I got a focus on the farmhouse, dimly outlined against the misty background, and as I lowered the little unit all of a sudden I saw the clear black shadow of a buck standing 100 yards away looking at me. ‘I’m sure it can’t see me,’ I thought, ‘standing here on the other side of this hedge’, so I slowly lifted my binoculars in my other hand and tried to make it out in the gloom. It was a bloody good buck, which really should be left for the rut, but in any case it was standing directly in front of my new best friend’s house and no shot was on. ‘Well at least it would wake him up,’ I thought, ‘a bullet through the bedroom window’. I watched it for a bit then thought that was my decision made for me. Rather than spook the buck, I backed away and decided to go stalking on my own and let the lazy bugger sleep.
I made my way back up to the car then started stalking along the woodland edge into what little wind there was, and felt that great stalker’s joy in the plant life around me, the fresh spring smells and even the inconvenient occasional pigeons noisily clattering off from the trees as I tried to creep silently down the woodland edge.
Past the wood there is a very long field in the bottom of the valley, maybe 200 yards across and the land rises beyond it to another pheasant drive from a cover crop at the top of the hill. There is a good place to cross the barbed wire fences where the beaters have tied an old feed sack round the top strand of wire, and I thought it would make a good vantage point to glass the rest of the farm.
I slowly stalked up an old broken hedge line that drops down from the wood and intersects about halfway along the long field, stopping to glass the fields beyond. Glory be, right in front of me in the long field I spotted a pair of roe grazing happily 100 yards past the fence, slightly hidden from me by a couple of trees. I stalked up behind the trees, and had a good look at them in the meadow grass through binoculars. There was a doe and a young buck, and the buck was exactly right for a cull. I set up my rifle on sticks (a set of Limulus’s finest quad sticks, if you’re interested) and edged the whole contraption slowly out sideways from behind the trees. The deer were completely unaware of me and not going anywhere, so with all the time in the world and no immediate chest shot on I started slowing my breath as I watched the crosshairs gradually settle down. The buck turned as he grazed, and very slowly made his way round until he was broadside on. I didn’t think about the shot, in fact I was almost surprised when the rifle went off. The recoil off the sticks caused me to lose sight of the buck through the scope as I reloaded, but my eyes caught the movement as the doe and buck ran off away and to the right across the field. ‘Good shot’ I thought to myself, and waited for the buck to fall. But it didn’t. It ran on and lots of hideous thoughts ran suddenly through my head. Had I heard the strike? Was now my time to miss? Had I knocked the scope out of alignment at some point? I thought back to the sight picture when the rifle went off and I thought to myself ‘that was a good shot - should be a dead deer’. At the far side of the field the doe unexpectedly stopped and turned back, and the buck stopped just behind her where I couldn’t see him properly, maybe 200 yards away. He didn’t seem injured, but I wasn’t sure and it wasn’t too far for a shot on quad sticks. I lined the shot up and waited for the doe to move. As soon as she moved enough to show me his chest, the rifle went off for a second time and the buck sprang high and pronked twenty yards before collapsing at the edge of the field.
‘Well it wasn’t the rifle the first time’ I thought. ‘Must have been me.’ I felt a bit embarrassed the miss had finally happened, and a bit confused because I couldn’t see how, and a bit happy (I got a buck, and nobody saw the miss!), and a tiny bit disoriented with my emotions swirling round. I waited a full five minutes to let him die and myself settle as I chewed over what had just happened. Through the binoculars I watched the doe, which had stopped in the open gateway to the field beyond, looking back and while I couldn’t see her expression I was certain it was recrimination, and in my moment of weakness I felt a bit like a murderer.
Eventually, I set off across the field towards the far hedgeline where the buck had fallen. And bugger me, I walked right over him stone dead in the middle of the field. After about a second of confusion of how he got all the way back here to die, I realised there must have been two different bucks. Presumably the first had fallen almost on top of his brother who was probably lying in the grass and who had run at the rifle report. When I first saw the two grazing deer it had simply never occurred to me there might have been a third out of sight. Well, two hard and horribly sweaty drags uphill to the edge of the field later, and who do I see sauntering down from the farmyard looking fresh and showered? ‘Hello’ he says, ‘well done, would love to help you but I need to go out to see someone. I overslept, you see, and I’m a bit late.’
Cursing him, but quite gratefully, I gralloched them then realised I'd forgotten to ask for the gate code so would have to carry them all the way out. And the roe sack was still in the car. Five trips later and a very tired but happy stalker made his way home, had a cup of tea and went back to bed.
