The latest update of my Hunting and Stalking

Well its been a while since i updated the blog and a fair bit has happened in that space of time. I have purchased a house in a prime hunting location in Victoria and am in the process of renovating it in order to allow my wife some comfort while I am in the mountains hunting. I have made several trips to "Sambarland" since the purchase and have had successful hunts on every trip. I have had the most success on Fallow Deer, however this is probably due to the high number of Fallow in the area more than anything else, as I am also seeing Sambar on nearly every outing.

I was over working on the house in September and had a couple of afternoons spare so I borrowed a rifle from a friend and had a couple of late afternoon hunts in a very nice looking gully system and found plenty of sign and some bedding areas. Then one afternoon it was very windy and cold with rain so I thought I would use that to my advantage and slowly hunt one of the deep blackberry gully's that the deer bed in as it would be the most sheltered spot in the whole system. My hunch paid off and I soon found myself shooting an old Fallow Doe that was very reluctant to leave the shelter of the blackberries.

My first successful stalk on a Fallow Doe.

I now had a freezer full of meat that would feed my family for quite a few weeks to come. My wife and I actually spent an afternoon making pasta a couple of days later to have with some of the meat from this deer and it was amazing, fresh venison and homemade pasta, does it get much better?.

My next success came in November, I was once again over working on the house and the long evenings gave me the chance to get out and hunt for a few hours as the heat of the day gave way to the cooling mountain air descending from the tops as the sun set. I had been looking over maps and google earth and found a fresh gully system I wanted to try so I concentrated on that for the next week or so. I spent my evenings walking the system learning where the game trails, bedding areas and feeding areas were. Then one day I had a morning hunt instead and walked above the game trails and stalked down onto one of the bedding areas glassing as I went. I was sitting down having a rest when I noticed 2 young fallow making their way through the bush to the bedding area. I very slowly chambered a bullet and raised my rifle, squeezing the trigger on the leading deer when they stopped for a look around. The deer jumped up at the shot and ran about 20 meters before falling and laying still, a nice young buck in prime condition he would be feeding us for the next few months for sure.

A nice young Fallow Buck.

Some of the meat ready to carry out.

   

My next opportunity came in late February early March when I was once again working on the house. I followed my usual routine of afternoon hunts until I once again got the chance for a morning hunt one weekend. I climbed about half way up a ridge before contouring into the wind glassing as I went. After an hour or so I decided to stop and have a drink, while stopped I glassed some more and spotted what I thought were some birds fluttering in some trees down hill from me. Thinking it could be a Lyre bird I got my video camera out and zoomed right in on it, only to discover a bedded Fallow buck twitching his ears as flies flew around his head.

The Fallow Buck Bedded down.

After watching him for about half an hour and seeing no Does with him I decided to stalk closer and try and get a good shot on him. I spent the next half an hour closing the hap to about 35 meters, at this point I guess the flies got a bit too much for him and he stood up. This presented me with a perfect front on shot and I saw hip drop on the spot as the big .45-70 recoiled. 

The Fallow Buck.

The frontal shot turned out to very effective in saving any of the meat from damage and this Buck had over an inch of fat on him. I had to make 2 trips to carry out all the meat but it was well worth the effort.

My next outing chasing Deer came in late April when I hosted 3 members of the Western Australian branch of the ADA (Australian Deer Association) for a week of Deer hunting. I will make that a stand alone entry as we drove over to Victoria from Western Australia, a 3 day adventure in itself!.