I have known Roger Jergenson, who represents Worldwide Trophy Adventures (WTA) https://worldwidetrophyadventures.com/ in Europe, for seven or eight years. We first hunted together when he was employed by Martin Neuper's exceptional FN Hunting https://www.fnhunting.com/ operation based in Austria. When the opportunity opened with WTA, I encouraged him to consider it. As a personable young American, with lots of hunting experience in North America and Europe, he struck me as a perfect consultant to navigate North American hunters through both the opportunities and challenges of hunting Europe.
At DSC's last Dallas convention, I was chatting with him about the new job with WTA and his even more dramatically changed life as a newly wed with a first child on the way. In passing, I mentioned that my friend and fellow Texan, Rick, was still very much interested in a European Brown Bear following our abortive plan to hunt the Kamchatka several years before. Shortly, the three of us were discussing options, and WTA's "Hunting Lodge" in the mountains of Northwestern Croatia emerged as an ideal option for Rick to fulfill his brown bear goal, a place where I could address an abiding passion for roe deer (three), and where the ladies could be treated to the incredible coastline of the country. A deal was quickly struck.
I have used hunting consultants occasionally when booking a hunt in an area with which I have little familiarity. Normally, I would not have done so for a roe deer hunt in Croatia. However, the brown bear added a certain seriousness to the project, and I was soon delighted we were working through Roger and WTA. Their contracting could not have been more clear, payment options were generous, and throughout the planning, Roger was a quick, and very responsive WhatsApp message away. We were also quickly in contact with Mike and Lisa Van Bekkum, a delightful and extraordinarily professional Dutch couple who operate the Hunting Lodge. All three were instrumental in not only ensuring that we arrived in Zagreb with zero questions with respect to the hunt, but also made recommendations and coordinated the transportation that made the tourist portion of the trip so delightful for our non-hunting spouses.
The twelfth of April arrived only ten days or so after my return from an amazing red stag and buffalo hunt in Argentina. https://www.africahunting.com/threa...-stag-roar-water-buffalo-in-argentina.102449/
I seemed to have barely unpacked my bag when I was again stuffing it with whatever might be necessary for a spring hunt in Europe. Like a fall hunt in Argentina, the extremes have the potential to challenge a packing list. In any case, we were soon on our way from Austin, through Charles De Gaulle, to Croatia. As usual, De Gaulle could give O'Hare a challenge as worst layover on the planet. However, traveling without firearms and having "entered" the EU in Paris, the arrival in Zagreb could not have been smoother and we were quickly settled into the beautiful and classically Old World-styled Esplanade Hotel in downtown Zagreb. There we spent a couple of days playing tourist in the old city and getting over the worst of our jetlag. The food was excellent and the wines were world class.
After three comfortable nights, Mike and Lisa scheduled a large van to pick us up at our hotel and we were soon on our way west southwest into the coastal Dinaric Alps. The lodge is only 1.5 hours from the airport, and the later half of the drive through the mountains was very lovely. The lodge itself sits in a lightly populated valley surrounded by mountains. It was very comfortable and both couples had their own private bath. I should mention that though a lifelong hunter, Mike and Lisa began their professional lives in the restaurant business in the Netherlands before moving on to their real passion of operating a hunting lodge - first in Germany and now in Croatia. Needless to say, mealtime was a treat.
Our rental equipment was excellent. Both rifles were 8mm by Steyr - one a 57 and the other a 64 - in their synthetic Pro-Hunter model. Mine carried a superb Schmidt & Bender, which when matched with my range finding Leica binoculars, would come in very handy, and the other with excellent thermal optics for Rick's bear hunt. Bear are hunted over bait from high seats at night, and the roe deer in a combination of stalking and high seat hunts during early morning and late afternoon.
A Danish father and son were also hunting bear, and they were housed in a separate cottage. The son had connected and departed the day before we arrived and the father would be with us all week before he too connected on a lovely representative boar.
According to Mike, conditions were not ideal. A very unusual, and very heavy snow storm had struck the area shortly before our arrival. This meant that the bears were just truly emerging from hibernation and were more difficult to pattern. Likewise, the roe deer were still transitioning to their normal spring summer behavior, with relatively few bucks having staked out territories. Most younger deer were still in velvet. That said, game was extremely abundant. In addition to our targeted animals, we saw dozens of red deer, the occasional chamois, and virtually every field had been hammered by wild boar.
The first afternoon, Mike and I stalked a high meadow, and then finished the evening in a high seat. I had mentioned to Mike that I had the good fortune to hunt roe deer quite a bit in my lifetime, and that I was far more interested in older animals than younger ones. I also let him know that I fully understood that mountain meadows were not the ideal environment to stumble across a gold-medal animal every day. Though no shooter showed himself that evening, we counted more than two-dozen during our hike and sit.
That same evening, Rick was nestled into an enclosed blind high on the mountain. He and his Bosnian guide, "Vetty," remained until nearly midnight. Three small bears came in at one time or another during the evening, but at the moment a larger bear appeared, Rick's hay fever kicked in with a vengeance sending the old boy on his way. Suffering periodically from the same unfortunately loud malady, I had packed a card of Zyrtec D. RIck would be pretreated and dried out for the next evening's hunt.
Brown bear blind
At first light, Mike and I were out looking for a buck while Rick and his guide caught up on some badly needed sleep in preparation for the second sit in the evening. We again saw numerous deer, but nothing that met our requirements for one to shoot. On the way back to the lodge we spotted one that would work. I set up quickly for a sixty yard shot, squeezed the excellent Steyr trigger, and expected to hear the strike of a bullet and see the deer on the ground (an 8mm of any variety should be decisive on such a small animal). Instead, we heard nothing and the deer had vanished. I was absolutely certain that I could not have possibly missed him. But other than a couple of hairs, there was no indication of a hit. We hurried back to the lodge, and rousted Veti and his Drahthaar which is trained to blood trail deer. After a few moments of initial interest at the shot site, she showed zero interest in trailing the buck. Studying the area of the shot one more time, Mike suddenly pointed at a small branch four or five feet in front of where the deer had been standing. I had nearly centered it rather than the buck. On the way back out that evening, to be certain about the rifle, Mike had me fire a shot at 100 yards which perfectly punched the target.
As we slipped along the edge of a huge pasture, Rick and Vali were headed up the mountain to try again for the large bear they had briefly encountered the evening before. The trail camera indicated that he had returned a couple of hours after being runoff by the Rick's coughing. There seemed nothing to prevent him from returning a third time.
Mike and I spent a couple of hours or so stalking various areas, but other than does and young bucks still in velvet, we saw nothing of real interest. He then suggested we go back to the large pasture and set up in a high seat until dark. We slipped up to the base of the seat very quietly, and Mike climbed first. As I was about to follow him, he suddenly paused on the top rung and soon whispered "buck." He slowly moved onto the seat, and I quietly followed him into mine on his right. Sure enough, directly across the field, and 299.8 yards away, according to my Leica 10x42 Geovid 3200's, was a lovely mature six-point buck. We watched him for several minutes, but it was soon clear, he would not venture farther into the field while it was still light.
Reaching over, and setting the scope's ballistic turret to 300 meters, Mike suggested I set up for the shot and see what I thought. This particular seat was well thought out. The side panel was slightly lower than the front panel upon which the rifle rested giving me perfect right elbow support. The rifles sling was padded providing a very good rest for the forearm. Through the scope, the crosshairs had essentially no movement with the scope set at 12 power. As the buck turned sideways, I put pressure on the trigger, and heard a solid "thwack." Recoil prevented me from seeing the result, but Mike slapped me on the back, and announced the buck had dropped in its tracks.
It was a bit of a hike over to him over soft ground, but we were rewarded with a lovely old deer. After obligatory photography, Mike headed off for the truck while I marveled at the opportunity set that allowed me to sit next to such a lovely creature in the not quite cold Croatian dusk.
It was full dark by the time we were loaded out, and we were about to turn onto the hardtop leading back to the lodge when both our phones rang. Vetty was calling Mike and Rick dialing me to let us know they had shot a bear, but though clearly hard hit, he had not dropped instantly. Unlike the previous night, he had come early as full darkness filled the forest. Vetty instantly gave the go ahead (as Jack O'Conner said, "the big ones look big"), and Rick fired as soon as he had a close to broadside shot. The video from the scope indicated a hard hit animal. But, unable to see him with flash lights, they drove to higher point to get a signal to call us. It was likely forty minutes after the shot that we linked up back at the shot location.
Note the seemingly "short" legs and "small" ears. This is an outstanding boar.
By flashlight, we could clearly see he was not at the bottom of the low ridge over which he initially tumbled. That meant he had then gone up hill from the end of that roll. The recording of the hit looked good, but the run uphill did not. We could see nothing certain through the thermals. A short council of war concluded that playing around in the dark with an extremely large and potentially wounded bear on a sixty degree thickly forested slope was unwise. Mike reached out to a neighbor who hunts problem bears for the government on park land. He also makes himself and his dogs available for a fee to area outfitters for this sort of situation. We agreed to meet up at the site the next day at mid-morning for the follow-up.
After a worrisome night for Rick, we headed up the mountain. Upon arrival we studied the steep slope that rose several hundred feet above us with binos as carefully as we could, but the undergrowth was incredibly thick making spotting an animal, should he be there, impossible. The ground rose beyond the bottom into which the bear rolled for several hundred feet above us. Indeed, in daylight the terrain and situation looked far more formidable than we had assumed in the dark. Mike had made a very wise decision to forego any such effort until we could employ dogs in daylight.
The hound man showed up as we were congratulating ourselves over our collective wisdom. Short and heavyset, he looked like he could deal with most bruins with a knife - or perhaps a club. However, he was armed with a short barreled R8 in what looked like 9.3 or .375 wearing a fixed power Zeiss scope in what I would suspect was 2.5X. Mike mentioned that he would typically track and kill at least half a dozen bears each year. His two primary dogs were a Black and Tan and a Bavarian Blood Hound.
Ordering us to remain where we were, he released the dogs at the site of the hit. They immediately raced down the ridge and started quartering up the other side. In short order they disappeared into a particularly thick patch that was a little higher than us and perhaps forty yards across the chasm. Almost immediately the two dogs started barking. The houndsman eased up to and then into the thicket. A shout then announced the bear was dead.
That forty yard straight line distance took a solid twenty minutes to negotiate. There the big bear lay, collapsed against a log, ideally positioned had we attempted to look for him the evening before. Looking at him, the houndsman shook his head, and declared that people would have been hurt or worse had we tried to follow him. Looking around the bear's ambush site, I did not doubt him for a minute. He also said it was by far the biggest bear he had seen in several years.
The next question was how to get him off the mountain. Fortunately, a logging crew also was at work on the mountain. A young man with a timber chainsaw and the skid driver immediately volunteered. It is amazing what 60 feet of cable, and an articulated chassis can contribute to an otherwise impossible recovery. Within an hour, a path was cleared and the big bear was dragged out and deposited in the trailer. Never were a pair of 50 Euro notes better earned.
Using the skid to retrieve the bear. The houndsman is in the center. I regrettably did not get his name, but three or more consonants stung together including a Z defeated me.
After the recovery, it was time for some serious photography of the incredible animal, and to get down to the exact business of scoring him. The teeth indicated a very old bear. The CIC score is essentially a metric determination of the bear's square. This old king of the forest scored 525 CIC! His massive skull measured 62 CIC. It was the largest bear ever taken by the lodge. That CIC score would square somewhere comfortably north of 9.6 feet which would be quite respectable in Alaska or Kamchatka. Just a magnificent international gold medal animal.
Mike, Rick, and Vetty with the big bear.
With the bear down and recovered, Mike and I went back to the serious business of hunting roe deer. Over the ensuing three days, we put together perfect stalks that were blown by intervening herds of red stag, shifts in the wind, and once by the noisiest tractor in all of Eastern Europe. We stumbled across a truly exceptional silver or gold medal buck while in the vehicle. The next morning we silently crept into the area only to be greeted by a series barks when the deer heard gravel shift as we crossed a dry stream bed. One evening nothing appeared on a beautiful meadow as we and the deer were serenaded by a pack of wolves.
On our last morning before our 11 am departure for the coast, Vetty and I slipped out of the lodge and stalked along the forest line where Mike and I had been busted by the tractor. As we eased up onto higher ground, Vetty suddenly froze and set the sticks. As I started to settle in, the buck broke to the left. Vetty gave a sharp bark and the animal paused for the millisecond I needed to get off a shot. From a score perspective, he was not an East European monster, but exactly the sort of old deer that I wanted to take.
After photos, we started down to get the truck and had not gone two hundred yards when we stumbled upon a group of seven or eight deer containing a very nice medal class buck. As I started to get set on the sticks for what should have been an easy 100 yard shot, something startled the whole mob and they came tearing past us at forty yards but offering nothing remotely like a shot opportunity. That is hunting.
Mike and Lisa were perfect hosts in one of the most comfortable and beautiful areas I have had the opportunity to hunt in Europe. I'll definitely be back. After all, Mike still owes me a deer - or at least a shrub does.
If I have not made it abundantly clear by now, the Hunting Lodge is a great destination in a beautiful corner of the world. It is just about the ideal location to bring a spouse who is not necessarily a hunter, but who enjoys travel. The lodge is very comfortable, and the Croatian coast is fairytale beautiful. Or, perhaps I should say Westeros beautiful. For those of you who were "Game of Thrones" fans (I was), much of the series was filmed in Croatia. Dubrovnik, which is one of Europe's most fascinating and well preserved medieval ports, played the setting (with a little help from CGI) for "Kings Landing."
Dubrovnik (Kings Landing) from the city wall and from the Adriatic.
Up the coast at Split, the ruins of Diocletian's Palace, in and around which the old city is built, were also used for filming many of the cellar and dungeon scenes.
So whether one is focused on Brown Bear, Red Stag, Roe Deer, or Boar, and where the added goals of crisp wines, great food, living history, and the Adriatic sun also would be welcome, WTA's Hunting Lodge in Croatia is a destination that I and the lovely Mrs. Red Leg could not recommend more highly.
At DSC's last Dallas convention, I was chatting with him about the new job with WTA and his even more dramatically changed life as a newly wed with a first child on the way. In passing, I mentioned that my friend and fellow Texan, Rick, was still very much interested in a European Brown Bear following our abortive plan to hunt the Kamchatka several years before. Shortly, the three of us were discussing options, and WTA's "Hunting Lodge" in the mountains of Northwestern Croatia emerged as an ideal option for Rick to fulfill his brown bear goal, a place where I could address an abiding passion for roe deer (three), and where the ladies could be treated to the incredible coastline of the country. A deal was quickly struck.
I have used hunting consultants occasionally when booking a hunt in an area with which I have little familiarity. Normally, I would not have done so for a roe deer hunt in Croatia. However, the brown bear added a certain seriousness to the project, and I was soon delighted we were working through Roger and WTA. Their contracting could not have been more clear, payment options were generous, and throughout the planning, Roger was a quick, and very responsive WhatsApp message away. We were also quickly in contact with Mike and Lisa Van Bekkum, a delightful and extraordinarily professional Dutch couple who operate the Hunting Lodge. All three were instrumental in not only ensuring that we arrived in Zagreb with zero questions with respect to the hunt, but also made recommendations and coordinated the transportation that made the tourist portion of the trip so delightful for our non-hunting spouses.
The twelfth of April arrived only ten days or so after my return from an amazing red stag and buffalo hunt in Argentina. https://www.africahunting.com/threa...-stag-roar-water-buffalo-in-argentina.102449/
I seemed to have barely unpacked my bag when I was again stuffing it with whatever might be necessary for a spring hunt in Europe. Like a fall hunt in Argentina, the extremes have the potential to challenge a packing list. In any case, we were soon on our way from Austin, through Charles De Gaulle, to Croatia. As usual, De Gaulle could give O'Hare a challenge as worst layover on the planet. However, traveling without firearms and having "entered" the EU in Paris, the arrival in Zagreb could not have been smoother and we were quickly settled into the beautiful and classically Old World-styled Esplanade Hotel in downtown Zagreb. There we spent a couple of days playing tourist in the old city and getting over the worst of our jetlag. The food was excellent and the wines were world class.
After three comfortable nights, Mike and Lisa scheduled a large van to pick us up at our hotel and we were soon on our way west southwest into the coastal Dinaric Alps. The lodge is only 1.5 hours from the airport, and the later half of the drive through the mountains was very lovely. The lodge itself sits in a lightly populated valley surrounded by mountains. It was very comfortable and both couples had their own private bath. I should mention that though a lifelong hunter, Mike and Lisa began their professional lives in the restaurant business in the Netherlands before moving on to their real passion of operating a hunting lodge - first in Germany and now in Croatia. Needless to say, mealtime was a treat.
Our rental equipment was excellent. Both rifles were 8mm by Steyr - one a 57 and the other a 64 - in their synthetic Pro-Hunter model. Mine carried a superb Schmidt & Bender, which when matched with my range finding Leica binoculars, would come in very handy, and the other with excellent thermal optics for Rick's bear hunt. Bear are hunted over bait from high seats at night, and the roe deer in a combination of stalking and high seat hunts during early morning and late afternoon.
A Danish father and son were also hunting bear, and they were housed in a separate cottage. The son had connected and departed the day before we arrived and the father would be with us all week before he too connected on a lovely representative boar.
According to Mike, conditions were not ideal. A very unusual, and very heavy snow storm had struck the area shortly before our arrival. This meant that the bears were just truly emerging from hibernation and were more difficult to pattern. Likewise, the roe deer were still transitioning to their normal spring summer behavior, with relatively few bucks having staked out territories. Most younger deer were still in velvet. That said, game was extremely abundant. In addition to our targeted animals, we saw dozens of red deer, the occasional chamois, and virtually every field had been hammered by wild boar.
The first afternoon, Mike and I stalked a high meadow, and then finished the evening in a high seat. I had mentioned to Mike that I had the good fortune to hunt roe deer quite a bit in my lifetime, and that I was far more interested in older animals than younger ones. I also let him know that I fully understood that mountain meadows were not the ideal environment to stumble across a gold-medal animal every day. Though no shooter showed himself that evening, we counted more than two-dozen during our hike and sit.
That same evening, Rick was nestled into an enclosed blind high on the mountain. He and his Bosnian guide, "Vetty," remained until nearly midnight. Three small bears came in at one time or another during the evening, but at the moment a larger bear appeared, Rick's hay fever kicked in with a vengeance sending the old boy on his way. Suffering periodically from the same unfortunately loud malady, I had packed a card of Zyrtec D. RIck would be pretreated and dried out for the next evening's hunt.
Brown bear blind
At first light, Mike and I were out looking for a buck while Rick and his guide caught up on some badly needed sleep in preparation for the second sit in the evening. We again saw numerous deer, but nothing that met our requirements for one to shoot. On the way back to the lodge we spotted one that would work. I set up quickly for a sixty yard shot, squeezed the excellent Steyr trigger, and expected to hear the strike of a bullet and see the deer on the ground (an 8mm of any variety should be decisive on such a small animal). Instead, we heard nothing and the deer had vanished. I was absolutely certain that I could not have possibly missed him. But other than a couple of hairs, there was no indication of a hit. We hurried back to the lodge, and rousted Veti and his Drahthaar which is trained to blood trail deer. After a few moments of initial interest at the shot site, she showed zero interest in trailing the buck. Studying the area of the shot one more time, Mike suddenly pointed at a small branch four or five feet in front of where the deer had been standing. I had nearly centered it rather than the buck. On the way back out that evening, to be certain about the rifle, Mike had me fire a shot at 100 yards which perfectly punched the target.
As we slipped along the edge of a huge pasture, Rick and Vali were headed up the mountain to try again for the large bear they had briefly encountered the evening before. The trail camera indicated that he had returned a couple of hours after being runoff by the Rick's coughing. There seemed nothing to prevent him from returning a third time.
Mike and I spent a couple of hours or so stalking various areas, but other than does and young bucks still in velvet, we saw nothing of real interest. He then suggested we go back to the large pasture and set up in a high seat until dark. We slipped up to the base of the seat very quietly, and Mike climbed first. As I was about to follow him, he suddenly paused on the top rung and soon whispered "buck." He slowly moved onto the seat, and I quietly followed him into mine on his right. Sure enough, directly across the field, and 299.8 yards away, according to my Leica 10x42 Geovid 3200's, was a lovely mature six-point buck. We watched him for several minutes, but it was soon clear, he would not venture farther into the field while it was still light.
Reaching over, and setting the scope's ballistic turret to 300 meters, Mike suggested I set up for the shot and see what I thought. This particular seat was well thought out. The side panel was slightly lower than the front panel upon which the rifle rested giving me perfect right elbow support. The rifles sling was padded providing a very good rest for the forearm. Through the scope, the crosshairs had essentially no movement with the scope set at 12 power. As the buck turned sideways, I put pressure on the trigger, and heard a solid "thwack." Recoil prevented me from seeing the result, but Mike slapped me on the back, and announced the buck had dropped in its tracks.
It was a bit of a hike over to him over soft ground, but we were rewarded with a lovely old deer. After obligatory photography, Mike headed off for the truck while I marveled at the opportunity set that allowed me to sit next to such a lovely creature in the not quite cold Croatian dusk.
It was full dark by the time we were loaded out, and we were about to turn onto the hardtop leading back to the lodge when both our phones rang. Vetty was calling Mike and Rick dialing me to let us know they had shot a bear, but though clearly hard hit, he had not dropped instantly. Unlike the previous night, he had come early as full darkness filled the forest. Vetty instantly gave the go ahead (as Jack O'Conner said, "the big ones look big"), and Rick fired as soon as he had a close to broadside shot. The video from the scope indicated a hard hit animal. But, unable to see him with flash lights, they drove to higher point to get a signal to call us. It was likely forty minutes after the shot that we linked up back at the shot location.
Note the seemingly "short" legs and "small" ears. This is an outstanding boar.
By flashlight, we could clearly see he was not at the bottom of the low ridge over which he initially tumbled. That meant he had then gone up hill from the end of that roll. The recording of the hit looked good, but the run uphill did not. We could see nothing certain through the thermals. A short council of war concluded that playing around in the dark with an extremely large and potentially wounded bear on a sixty degree thickly forested slope was unwise. Mike reached out to a neighbor who hunts problem bears for the government on park land. He also makes himself and his dogs available for a fee to area outfitters for this sort of situation. We agreed to meet up at the site the next day at mid-morning for the follow-up.
After a worrisome night for Rick, we headed up the mountain. Upon arrival we studied the steep slope that rose several hundred feet above us with binos as carefully as we could, but the undergrowth was incredibly thick making spotting an animal, should he be there, impossible. The ground rose beyond the bottom into which the bear rolled for several hundred feet above us. Indeed, in daylight the terrain and situation looked far more formidable than we had assumed in the dark. Mike had made a very wise decision to forego any such effort until we could employ dogs in daylight.
The hound man showed up as we were congratulating ourselves over our collective wisdom. Short and heavyset, he looked like he could deal with most bruins with a knife - or perhaps a club. However, he was armed with a short barreled R8 in what looked like 9.3 or .375 wearing a fixed power Zeiss scope in what I would suspect was 2.5X. Mike mentioned that he would typically track and kill at least half a dozen bears each year. His two primary dogs were a Black and Tan and a Bavarian Blood Hound.
Ordering us to remain where we were, he released the dogs at the site of the hit. They immediately raced down the ridge and started quartering up the other side. In short order they disappeared into a particularly thick patch that was a little higher than us and perhaps forty yards across the chasm. Almost immediately the two dogs started barking. The houndsman eased up to and then into the thicket. A shout then announced the bear was dead.
That forty yard straight line distance took a solid twenty minutes to negotiate. There the big bear lay, collapsed against a log, ideally positioned had we attempted to look for him the evening before. Looking at him, the houndsman shook his head, and declared that people would have been hurt or worse had we tried to follow him. Looking around the bear's ambush site, I did not doubt him for a minute. He also said it was by far the biggest bear he had seen in several years.
The next question was how to get him off the mountain. Fortunately, a logging crew also was at work on the mountain. A young man with a timber chainsaw and the skid driver immediately volunteered. It is amazing what 60 feet of cable, and an articulated chassis can contribute to an otherwise impossible recovery. Within an hour, a path was cleared and the big bear was dragged out and deposited in the trailer. Never were a pair of 50 Euro notes better earned.
Using the skid to retrieve the bear. The houndsman is in the center. I regrettably did not get his name, but three or more consonants stung together including a Z defeated me.
After the recovery, it was time for some serious photography of the incredible animal, and to get down to the exact business of scoring him. The teeth indicated a very old bear. The CIC score is essentially a metric determination of the bear's square. This old king of the forest scored 525 CIC! His massive skull measured 62 CIC. It was the largest bear ever taken by the lodge. That CIC score would square somewhere comfortably north of 9.6 feet which would be quite respectable in Alaska or Kamchatka. Just a magnificent international gold medal animal.
Mike, Rick, and Vetty with the big bear.
With the bear down and recovered, Mike and I went back to the serious business of hunting roe deer. Over the ensuing three days, we put together perfect stalks that were blown by intervening herds of red stag, shifts in the wind, and once by the noisiest tractor in all of Eastern Europe. We stumbled across a truly exceptional silver or gold medal buck while in the vehicle. The next morning we silently crept into the area only to be greeted by a series barks when the deer heard gravel shift as we crossed a dry stream bed. One evening nothing appeared on a beautiful meadow as we and the deer were serenaded by a pack of wolves.
On our last morning before our 11 am departure for the coast, Vetty and I slipped out of the lodge and stalked along the forest line where Mike and I had been busted by the tractor. As we eased up onto higher ground, Vetty suddenly froze and set the sticks. As I started to settle in, the buck broke to the left. Vetty gave a sharp bark and the animal paused for the millisecond I needed to get off a shot. From a score perspective, he was not an East European monster, but exactly the sort of old deer that I wanted to take.
After photos, we started down to get the truck and had not gone two hundred yards when we stumbled upon a group of seven or eight deer containing a very nice medal class buck. As I started to get set on the sticks for what should have been an easy 100 yard shot, something startled the whole mob and they came tearing past us at forty yards but offering nothing remotely like a shot opportunity. That is hunting.
Mike and Lisa were perfect hosts in one of the most comfortable and beautiful areas I have had the opportunity to hunt in Europe. I'll definitely be back. After all, Mike still owes me a deer - or at least a shrub does.
If I have not made it abundantly clear by now, the Hunting Lodge is a great destination in a beautiful corner of the world. It is just about the ideal location to bring a spouse who is not necessarily a hunter, but who enjoys travel. The lodge is very comfortable, and the Croatian coast is fairytale beautiful. Or, perhaps I should say Westeros beautiful. For those of you who were "Game of Thrones" fans (I was), much of the series was filmed in Croatia. Dubrovnik, which is one of Europe's most fascinating and well preserved medieval ports, played the setting (with a little help from CGI) for "Kings Landing."
Dubrovnik (Kings Landing) from the city wall and from the Adriatic.
Up the coast at Split, the ruins of Diocletian's Palace, in and around which the old city is built, were also used for filming many of the cellar and dungeon scenes.
So whether one is focused on Brown Bear, Red Stag, Roe Deer, or Boar, and where the added goals of crisp wines, great food, living history, and the Adriatic sun also would be welcome, WTA's Hunting Lodge in Croatia is a destination that I and the lovely Mrs. Red Leg could not recommend more highly.
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