devon deer
Well-known member
August 1st marked the start of the Red Stag/Fallow Buck season in England.
For several weeks farmers have been texting/phoning/emailing me to come out and shoot them, we have more deer than ever running around in my part of the world, we are just not keeping up with the population explosion.
But as we all know, we are in strange times, we are permitted to sell any excess venison we harvest, but without the demand of the restaurants etc the price paid has crashed, and in most cases the game dealers who buy it off us aren’t taking any.
We are fortunate where I live, my local dealer is buying them in, but understandably paying next to nothing, but he appreciates (being a farmer himself) the deer still need to be controlled, so he has come up with new idea’s to market the venison, but he will only take small stags for the time being.
I went out yesterday, picked a vantage point, waited for an hour, and saw bugger all!
Typical, I had been seeing them there for weeks, then yesterday, zilch!
Whilst I am very patient (my wife doesn’t agree!
) I have my limits so looked elsewhere, only been there 10 minutes and this one popped out, a spiker/pricket, perfect, I reached for my rangefinder, damn it, left it in the truck!
I knew where I first saw him was 300 yards, too far with a standing shot off my quad sticks, but conveniently he started to walk towards me, however the wind was swirling, and he became restless, started to trot and was about to leap through the gap in the hedge, so I fired the .243, a good hit, he went 20 yards and fell over stone dead.
It was only when I gralloched (gutted) him I realised I only just delivered a fatal shot, took out the heart, when I got my range finder it said 195 yards.
I text my mate @leec270 he said ‘you have some hot work now’ my reply, ’nope I hunted smart, drove the truck right up to it’
I did my inspection checking for any disease and then dropped it off at the game dealers where I discovered other deer stalkers had been busy!
As I arrived the owner turned up on a quad, he was just going out to shoot some bunnies, to feed his birds of prey, his cool hobby.
Cheers
Richard
For several weeks farmers have been texting/phoning/emailing me to come out and shoot them, we have more deer than ever running around in my part of the world, we are just not keeping up with the population explosion.
But as we all know, we are in strange times, we are permitted to sell any excess venison we harvest, but without the demand of the restaurants etc the price paid has crashed, and in most cases the game dealers who buy it off us aren’t taking any.
We are fortunate where I live, my local dealer is buying them in, but understandably paying next to nothing, but he appreciates (being a farmer himself) the deer still need to be controlled, so he has come up with new idea’s to market the venison, but he will only take small stags for the time being.
I went out yesterday, picked a vantage point, waited for an hour, and saw bugger all!
Typical, I had been seeing them there for weeks, then yesterday, zilch!
Whilst I am very patient (my wife doesn’t agree!
) I have my limits so looked elsewhere, only been there 10 minutes and this one popped out, a spiker/pricket, perfect, I reached for my rangefinder, damn it, left it in the truck!I knew where I first saw him was 300 yards, too far with a standing shot off my quad sticks, but conveniently he started to walk towards me, however the wind was swirling, and he became restless, started to trot and was about to leap through the gap in the hedge, so I fired the .243, a good hit, he went 20 yards and fell over stone dead.
It was only when I gralloched (gutted) him I realised I only just delivered a fatal shot, took out the heart, when I got my range finder it said 195 yards.
I text my mate @leec270 he said ‘you have some hot work now’ my reply, ’nope I hunted smart, drove the truck right up to it’
I did my inspection checking for any disease and then dropped it off at the game dealers where I discovered other deer stalkers had been busy!
As I arrived the owner turned up on a quad, he was just going out to shoot some bunnies, to feed his birds of prey, his cool hobby.
Cheers
Richard
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