My First Roebuck

[dave1372 83]

First of all I would like to say a massive thanks to my mate who kindly took me under his wing and has taken me out a number of times to help me get my first buck and intro into deerstalking. Hopefully he has not downed all the whiskey I gave this morning and is still sober enough to read this post.....cheers mate.

 

We headed out just after 5am and tried walking a few different spots using the butollo caller to see if we could get anything to appear. We had stalked a dozen or so fields without any sign of a buck at all.

 

Finally at about 8am we arrived at a nice spot in a wheat field that showed signs of recent activity and we settled in and again tried the caller. After a couple of minutes our eyes caught some movement in the next field:

 

 

We quickly identified it was a buck bounding across the field.....unfortunately not quite in our direction, possibly the echo of the call had maybe thrown it somewhat off track. We lost sight of it as the tree in the field boundary obscured our view (the big one in the middle of the picture) but we could tell that the buck must have changed direction as it did not reappear in the direction it had originally been travelling.

 

After what seemed an eternity (but was probably less than 5 minutes) we spotted movement of the buck tearing along the opposite side of the hedge our our field. By this time a million and one things were going through my head the first one being 'don't cock this shot up or I will look a complete tit'! At this point we heard it must have jumped the hedge and was heading straight down the edge of field right towards me less than 70 yards away but still not visible:

 

 

A couple of hen pheasants got up and just as I was eagerly expecting it to come into view it didn't! The damn thing had decided as it was headed along towards us to jump into the adjacent field of barley (to the left hand side of the picture above) and suddenly appeared 5 yards away. At this point I abandoned the sticks, turned and the buck had decided it wasn't hanging about and strarted to make good its getaway, we managed to get one more call in and it stopped about 20 yards away. The barley is tall and all I could see was the head and neck so I made the decision that a neck shot was my best (but not preferred) option and down it went.

 

 

It was a five pointer, maybe 4 yrs old and a decent size as far as I can tell.

 

We did want to continue on swiftly to see if anything else was about but the farmer decided he wanted to come over for a chat as he had spotted my car rather than my mates car and wanted to double check it was him, which the time the farmer finished his chat meant it was getting on after 9am so we decided to try one last area where the farmer mentioned he had came across a circle in the wheat crop from the buck chasing a doe;

 

 

On the approach we could see a buck a couple of hundred yards away heading towards the safety of the tree line. We waitied a few minutes then got into position and tried to call it in but after ten minutes of calling there was no sign of it showing, it may have already found the compamy of a doe in the treeline we thought. After that it was time to call it a day, and as far as I was concerned it was a perfect morning.:-D:-D:-D

[Caprelous 217]

Brilliant absolutely brilliant account, hope you have many more days like the one you described, well done to you.

 

Regards

Stu

[martin 332]

You are truly living the dream Dave,you do know that you are hooked for life now!

[carp man 1 219]

well done lads hope it taste nice 4 u

[wireviz 8]

Well done Dave i am sure that will have you looking for the next fix. I hope you new deer stalking was a class A drug

[dave1372 83]

....cheers fellas......I am well hooked now, and have managed to get some permission providing I get my DSC1 at the end of Sept, so looking forward to some early mornings and late evening stalks.

[Yokel Matt 918]

Awsome account Dave - like the sequence pics as well. Congratulations on your 1st Roe Buck and what a nice way to take it charging into a call

[dave1372 83]

....I can't wait to get back out but the weather forecasts this week are absolutely miserable, or it is a day I can't do when it is forecast to be nice....typical eh!

 

I think next year I will book the second week in August of so I can spend a bit of time on the ground. hope you guys are all getting some decent action too.

[whin 463]

26 years has passed since we got outr first buck good feeling laden with pheasants and bang a goodbuck great feeling ,i remeber the carry more than the kill but it tasted good all the same