I'm still a bit euphoric writing this, shooting my first roebuck yesterday afternoon!
Together with some close friends we now have our own hunting fields in Wallonia (southern Belgium), so we decided to do some hunting. Wild boar and fox are open year round, and since the first of May, the yearly roebuck season is also open in Belgium.
As some of you know already I have no love for driven hunts, so the mode of hunting we used was Pirsh or treestand still hunting. For the past two weeks I have been going to the hunting grounds, getting up at 2:45 in the morning, to drive 1h30 and be on the field and in the stand by 4:30 in the morning. Together with my 'hunting mentor' (named R.) we then hunt until around 9:00, go back to his place for some coffee and breakfast, do some odd chores or rest up and by 17:00 we are back in the tree stand until about 22:00, after which I take the 1.5h drive back home.
The very first day we went out like this, we had already seen this big "spitzer" old roebuck running around in the fields. As is often the case for these old animals, very intelligent and wary of the smallest movement or sound. As these "spitzer's" or "daguet" in French (dagger), do not have all the forks on their rack like they should have, they frequently injure or even kill other roebuck. So this was definitely a good one to take.
I will not bore you with all the times we went out, saw him from afar, running at high speed or just catching glimpses of him and his girlfriend, but I'll jump to yesterday afternoon.
We were on the field and in the treestand by around 17:30, starting to settle in for what promised to be a long wait, as we usually saw him around 20:30-21:30, with daylight fading.
Around 18:15 however, I saw him running left to right just at the edge of the tree line to right of the picture. Chased by his girlfriend as usual. Where they come from and how they suddenly appeared like that, only the roedeer gods know. I immediately whispered to my friend that it was "our" buck. We expected them to continue to the right and end up in a field right behind us, where we had spotted them before. So very gently I started turning around on the seat, in order to have a chance of a shot through the trees onto the next field. No later had I fully turned left (I'm right handed), awkwardly half-seated, with my legs hanging out of the stand, or R told me that the roe deer (the girlfriend) had returned in front of us and was just behind the left-to-right fence you see in the middle of the picture.
As I was already in position looking the other way around, for the buck, this was unlucky, but we decided to keep in position like this. About 30min later, starting to get cramps in my back and legs from all the twisting I hear "don't move, the buck just came out 30m from us". In front of course. Now the trick to move in front of game is to only move when they are grazing so that is what we did. R told me "move", then "stop", while I was still turned and could not see anything, and we played this game with the buck every time he put his head down. After about 10min of moving bit by bit, getting the rifle pointed in the right direction again, my knees and legs untangled from the high seat, I had him in full view, about 50m from us at that point. He was looking straight at us, realising that something was wrong, there was too much noise, too much movement probably, and he was getting ready to bolt. Luckily I had remembered to put my scope at the lowest magnification before having done all the maneuvres (thank you AH!) so it just remained a question of cocking the rifle, cross in the middle of his chest and squeezing. He dropped like a stone (then again a .300 WinMag on a 25kg animal will do that)
The euphoria I felt and giddiness after... we could not contain ourselves. So many times this old warrior had slipped us by, never giving a good opportunity. And now we finally got him! This will be another amazing memory for a lifetime!
thanks for reading!
V.
Together with some close friends we now have our own hunting fields in Wallonia (southern Belgium), so we decided to do some hunting. Wild boar and fox are open year round, and since the first of May, the yearly roebuck season is also open in Belgium.
As some of you know already I have no love for driven hunts, so the mode of hunting we used was Pirsh or treestand still hunting. For the past two weeks I have been going to the hunting grounds, getting up at 2:45 in the morning, to drive 1h30 and be on the field and in the stand by 4:30 in the morning. Together with my 'hunting mentor' (named R.) we then hunt until around 9:00, go back to his place for some coffee and breakfast, do some odd chores or rest up and by 17:00 we are back in the tree stand until about 22:00, after which I take the 1.5h drive back home.
The very first day we went out like this, we had already seen this big "spitzer" old roebuck running around in the fields. As is often the case for these old animals, very intelligent and wary of the smallest movement or sound. As these "spitzer's" or "daguet" in French (dagger), do not have all the forks on their rack like they should have, they frequently injure or even kill other roebuck. So this was definitely a good one to take.
I will not bore you with all the times we went out, saw him from afar, running at high speed or just catching glimpses of him and his girlfriend, but I'll jump to yesterday afternoon.
We were on the field and in the treestand by around 17:30, starting to settle in for what promised to be a long wait, as we usually saw him around 20:30-21:30, with daylight fading.
on the treestand with my Mauser M03
Around 18:15 however, I saw him running left to right just at the edge of the tree line to right of the picture. Chased by his girlfriend as usual. Where they come from and how they suddenly appeared like that, only the roedeer gods know. I immediately whispered to my friend that it was "our" buck. We expected them to continue to the right and end up in a field right behind us, where we had spotted them before. So very gently I started turning around on the seat, in order to have a chance of a shot through the trees onto the next field. No later had I fully turned left (I'm right handed), awkwardly half-seated, with my legs hanging out of the stand, or R told me that the roe deer (the girlfriend) had returned in front of us and was just behind the left-to-right fence you see in the middle of the picture.
As I was already in position looking the other way around, for the buck, this was unlucky, but we decided to keep in position like this. About 30min later, starting to get cramps in my back and legs from all the twisting I hear "don't move, the buck just came out 30m from us". In front of course. Now the trick to move in front of game is to only move when they are grazing so that is what we did. R told me "move", then "stop", while I was still turned and could not see anything, and we played this game with the buck every time he put his head down. After about 10min of moving bit by bit, getting the rifle pointed in the right direction again, my knees and legs untangled from the high seat, I had him in full view, about 50m from us at that point. He was looking straight at us, realising that something was wrong, there was too much noise, too much movement probably, and he was getting ready to bolt. Luckily I had remembered to put my scope at the lowest magnification before having done all the maneuvres (thank you AH!) so it just remained a question of cocking the rifle, cross in the middle of his chest and squeezing. He dropped like a stone (then again a .300 WinMag on a 25kg animal will do that)
The euphoria I felt and giddiness after... we could not contain ourselves. So many times this old warrior had slipped us by, never giving a good opportunity. And now we finally got him! This will be another amazing memory for a lifetime!
thanks for reading!
V.
