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Stalking this morning


moses
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Well it was an early start for me this morning. I stayed at a mates in Wiltshire friday night to be able to go stalking this morning.

 

The alarm went off at 3.45am and I was up and dressed and the kettle was on within minutes.

A good strong coffee later and we were on our way out just after 4am.

 

The high seat we were heading to can be very fruitful but, you need to be in position very early.

The Fallow cross this ride as they return to the wood after feeding out in the fields all night.

 

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We could see animals out on the ride as we made our way to the seat but, no chance of sexing them in the dark.

Slowly we climbed up undetected and waited for the light to draw in.

 

I could see at least 30 or so beasts out grazing to the left of us so, we were just hoping they would still be there once it got a bit lighter. I pinged them with the rangefinder and the closest was just over 180yds away. I had been on the range the day before with the 6.5 and new it was shooting spot on at 200.

 

It was finally starting to get to the stage where we could see more clearly and we were both studying every animal looking for prickets. It was easy to see the does with fawns at heel so it was more a case of looking at the animals grazing alone or in 2's and 3's.

 

I noticed two deer with their heads down grazing, I was watching them closely in the binos when one raised its head and I could see his spikes still in velvet. I just had to wait for a shot as he was front on to me.

 

It felt like a long wait but, then after a few minutes he began to turn. I placed the little red dot on his shoulder and slowly pushed the saftey off. At the time I squeezed the trigger he reached his head round to clean himself by licking his right flank so instead of entering his shoulder first the bullet hit him between the eyes just off centre, exited the right eye and through into his body.

He dropped on the spot.

 

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The picture below is my view to the left of the seat and you can see the deer above lying dead under the pylon.

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As the first shot rang out all the deer had run into the wood on the right hand side of the ride but, we knew they didn't want to be in there. They would have come past us to get to the bigger wood on the other side of the track where they lay up for the day. We decided to wait for them.

 

It was abot 20 minutes later and we could see a few does and fawns slowly coming out of the wood, there were more deer behind them. As they appeared in 1's and 2's it was easy to tell what the were and it wasn't long before a pricket arrived.

He began to bound accross the ride quite quickly, I was following him in the scope and he was just a couple of metres from the safety of the wood edge when he made the mistake of pausing broadside for too long and I sent a 120grn nosler to meet him.

 

He reacted well to shot and tried to run on but, he was heart shot and he didn't get far. In the end he dropped about 10 metres from the first beast.

 

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After that we called it a day, all in all a great couple of hours :good:

 

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Edited by moses
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