Thread: Victory! (First Deer)

Went out early yesterday morning, the wife and I, for a planned 3 day (2 night) trip in the hope of seeing a deer or a pig. It was a great learning experience (mostly with what not to do)!

Nothing seemed to go right to begin with, starting with about 4hrs more of a slog to even get to the boundary of the hunting block due to trying to avoid wet pants crossing a certain river! This involved plenty of backtracking along with a good old padlocked gate on an 8ft high fence on the public walking track. That made me want to take bolt cutters in my pack next time. Not fun climbing it with 20kg's of gear, and it was definitely on the track as the markers were right before and after it. Anyway...

After finally reaching the block we were pretty much stuffed, so decided to set up camp not far into it - at a nice looking little spot next to a stream that fed into the river. It must have been about 30mins or an hour after we set up the tent and sleeping mats and unpacked everything that we realized how bad the sand flies were! Dear god...this made the fly season where I work in Aus look like playtime. There must have been hundreds if not thousands on our tent alone, a good portion of them managing to get inside each time we took diving rolls in/out before quickly zipping it up again. The repellant we had did jack fuck all and never have I so badly wished for a small can of mortein, just to nuke the tent before bed if nothing else.

Check out this photo of our tent when we were taking it down (it was even worse before we took the fly off):




That evening about 7pm while the other half was taking a nap I went out for a bit of a look. I didn't rate my chances and would've been stoked with seeing a hare or rabbit for a bit of target practice. It was glorious being sand fly free as they seemed to leave me alone even moving slowly as I was. I wandered up the stream, moving very slowly and stopping lots to use the rangefinder to glass. Didn't go far and turned back once the bush crept up to the bank. I went back down to where we'd set up camp and headed further into the block along the river. I must have only gone about 200 meters and I was looking back along the opposite bank of the river when I saw a few hundred meters away....what is that? A fucking cow? Nope....you've got to be shitting me! I grabbed at the rangefinder desperately, and behold...there stood a deer ambling up to the river for a drink. Not a care in the world. I slowly ducked down among the long grass and ranged it - 325yds. A lot further than i'd ever shot before (120yds with a 22) and this 308 was still a virgin. I was on a ledge over the river about 10 meters below, and it was a straight drop, so there was no real hope of getting closer. I'd just started to go through my options while crawling right up to the edge of the ledge (about 5 seconds after seeing the deer). When I used the rangefinder again to check on things there were suddenly 4 deer! Three of its pals had wandered out of the bush to join in the drinking. They were also heading off downstream and woudn't be in view for much longer if they kept that up.

Here's a picture of the shooting location so you can see what I mean. My budget paint skills have circled where the deer was in yellow:




I whipped the rifle out and quickly chucked the bipod on. I used the trusty Leica again and the deer that was presenting nicest was now 406yds. Two were ass towards me a bit closer and the 4th was behind a log further away, almost around the bend in the river. From playing with my ballistics app (iStrelok) I knew that 400yds was the 3rd line down on my scopes reticle at 15x zoom. So I went to 15x and placed that third line on its left shoulder. At some point i'd taken the safety off and worked the bolt to put one in the chamber, but I can't remember exactly when. The adrenalin was pumping and my hands were trembling. I gave myself a few seconds to breathe and then slowly squeezed the trigger. The shot rang out, and almost before i'd registered that i'd fired I saw the deer go down as if hit in the brain with a sledgehammer. I couldn't believe how fast it dropped, and neither could the others by their reaction. There was much looking at their downed mate and looking around. A little bit of trotting and then more looking around, and finally they thought, "fuck this," and all bolted into the bush that was a few meters away. I remember thinking at the time that I could have got two more while they were pissing about. It was probably only 10 seconds before they took off, but for some reason I expected them to be gone a lot quicker than that. I sure wasn't greedy though - I was stoked with 1! I knew it'd be more than we could carry too. I had another round in the chamber and had my crosshair glued to where I could see the downed one spasmodically kicking. If it got up it wasn't going to go far! I stayed there like this for a good minute just making absolutely sure. The X-Bolt 308's virginity was well and truly busted!

After that I began the quick walk back to camp, dragging the wife out of bed and telling her i'd got a deer and to come help. I received the slightly dubious reply of, "Really?" but, moving on from that, it probably took us 45 minutes to negotiate our way there across a stream and then both sections of the river - even though it was only about 200-300 meters from camp. That was ok, I knew it wasn't going anywhere. It had fallen into the water, I could tell that by the splashes it made as it went through its death throes, but I could also tell that it was very shallow water.

Here's a picture of it when we arrived:




The bullet went in through the left shoulder and out through the right side of its neck. Impact was slightly higher than where i'd aimed, but still happy with the result. The exit would was wide enough for 2 or 3 fingers and it felt the same as far as I bothered to reach inside. If I had more time I would've liked to go digging around for fragments etc, but I must say the 168gr MatchKing did its job well on this occasion.

It was probably about 8pm when I fired, and light was fading fast by the time we got there. Head lamps were on for the butchering task ahead. I dragged it to a rock shelf in the middle of the river and immediately knew there was no way I was carrying this thing out. It was an effort for me to even drag and I couldn't guess at the weight. The most important thing I learned on this trip was to pack far fucking less. I probably had 30kg's of gear including my rifle. My wifes backpack was full also, and she had the 22. I nearly wanted to leave our 5kg Warehouse tent behind when it came time for the trek out. We've had it for years and never used it, and i'm never carrying the fucking thing again. So a new tent plus leaving the kitchen sink at home and the meat side of things should go a bit better next time.

Anyway, I set to with my extremely average skinning and butchering skills, but what better way to learn!? I took both back straps and the meat from one shoulder, and then it started to rain. Being a complete novice I had visions of rising water levels and us being swept away from our little rocky island in the middle of the river. I took the meat off one of the back legs and figured that's about all we would be able to carry out anyway. After that it was back to camp for a fire to try and dry out my boots. My wife wore gumboots and I will never hear the bloody end of it i'm sure. Especially since I said that I didn't want to wear gumboots for 3 days for fear of blisters, and I got blisters and she didn't. Those boots are going too - old work boots that aren't up to the task.

We walked out today, and crossed the river that we initially pussy'd out of. There was a couple of dicey moments where the current nearly got the better of us, but hell if we knew it'd save us 4hrs the day before we would have done it then too!

I'll be hitting ya'll up for advice on the meat. It was rinsed in the river and then bagged and was in my pack for 24hrs. I've just cleaned any remaining bits of grit off and it's now in the fridge as I saw somewhere on here about aging it in the fridge. Let me know what to do with it from here. Freeze it now? Age it and then freeze it? Just let me know.

All in all a great trip and I learned a hell of a lot. Hope you enjoyed the read if you bothered, and I don't blame you if you didn't!