Beard
Well-Known Member
So I've noticed that there are a few hunters on this site.
A few months back I decided that a mid week spotlight was well over due, so one Tuesday arvo I knocked off work early and headed out with a mate to see what we could see. We arrived at the property with an hour of daylight left and thought we'd have a quick walk around where there had been some deer during the last few shoots on this certain property.
After wandering around seeing bugger all we decided to head back to my ute, as it was now almost dark to have a cuppa and get set up for spotlighting foxes and bunnies. We were almost back at the ute when I noticed a small mob of Fallow grazing on the side of a hill just out of the scrub line about 500 metres away. I put in a quick stalk but couldn't get any closer than about 250 m due to a very deep sheer sided washout (erosion creek).
Sitting down I used my knee as a lean and my 6.5 spoke, putting up a puff of dust just about the head of a doe I had lined up.
Well,
They went nuts and broke in every direction. What I though was initially 3 or 4 deer turned out to be 8 or 9, no bucks though. One small doe cut off to my left and was angling toward me. Cycling to bolt I took a hold on its left shoulder and squeezed off a shot, dropping it at the base of a large gumtree(good marker point to retrieve it later as it was gonna be a bit of a drive to get around the washout). It was laser ranged at 170m, so on the run I was pretty happy with the shot.
Driving to retrieve the deer we were casually looking about with the spotty and picked off a few rabbits with my 17hmr. I picked up a fox in some scrub a good 3-400m away. I reached into my pocket for the fox whistle and it wasn't there, must have dropped it in a paddock somewhere. I tried calling it in with an empty 17 shell, leaning ovey the bonnet, 6.5 ready, scope wound up to 18x tooting away. Rennie, my shooting mate whispered "to you right". I looked around and there was a fox, came in to the whistle, standing about 15 metres away from me just looking at us trying to figure out what was happening. I swung the rifle but the scope was up WAY too high for something so close, all I could see was out of focus red fur but I wasn't about to lose this fox so I let a round out anyway............
This is the presentable side
We eventually got back to the deer and butchered it.
Not a bad start to an otherwise quiret night.
A few months back I decided that a mid week spotlight was well over due, so one Tuesday arvo I knocked off work early and headed out with a mate to see what we could see. We arrived at the property with an hour of daylight left and thought we'd have a quick walk around where there had been some deer during the last few shoots on this certain property.
After wandering around seeing bugger all we decided to head back to my ute, as it was now almost dark to have a cuppa and get set up for spotlighting foxes and bunnies. We were almost back at the ute when I noticed a small mob of Fallow grazing on the side of a hill just out of the scrub line about 500 metres away. I put in a quick stalk but couldn't get any closer than about 250 m due to a very deep sheer sided washout (erosion creek).
Sitting down I used my knee as a lean and my 6.5 spoke, putting up a puff of dust just about the head of a doe I had lined up.
Well,
They went nuts and broke in every direction. What I though was initially 3 or 4 deer turned out to be 8 or 9, no bucks though. One small doe cut off to my left and was angling toward me. Cycling to bolt I took a hold on its left shoulder and squeezed off a shot, dropping it at the base of a large gumtree(good marker point to retrieve it later as it was gonna be a bit of a drive to get around the washout). It was laser ranged at 170m, so on the run I was pretty happy with the shot.
Driving to retrieve the deer we were casually looking about with the spotty and picked off a few rabbits with my 17hmr. I picked up a fox in some scrub a good 3-400m away. I reached into my pocket for the fox whistle and it wasn't there, must have dropped it in a paddock somewhere. I tried calling it in with an empty 17 shell, leaning ovey the bonnet, 6.5 ready, scope wound up to 18x tooting away. Rennie, my shooting mate whispered "to you right". I looked around and there was a fox, came in to the whistle, standing about 15 metres away from me just looking at us trying to figure out what was happening. I swung the rifle but the scope was up WAY too high for something so close, all I could see was out of focus red fur but I wasn't about to lose this fox so I let a round out anyway............
This is the presentable side
We eventually got back to the deer and butchered it.
Not a bad start to an otherwise quiret night.
