As some of you would have noticed through my posts I took on a pup back in November thanks to a post made by @Harryg about his mate who had a pup to move on.
I begged and begged my wife to allow me another dog and eventually the cute little 8 week old photos of him worked their magic on her and I was off to pick up Bo.
My plan for Bo was to have a handy companion that was well behaved on the hill and a good mate to follow me about on the farm.
From day one Bo has shown strong hunting characteristics and I started him off finding shot hares when he was only about 11 weeks old. I did all the normal obedience training with him and got those commands rock solid.
He's had a strong nose from day one and ground and air scents all the time while he's going about his day. As a wee fella he sat and air scented up a wee gully when we were on the farm one day and lo and behold a deer popped out of the gorse where he was looking, well done, great instincts!
We moved onto actually following known deer trails and eventually we had a couple of encounters of deer which was cool to confirm to me he was doing what he was supposed to do. In January this year at only 4 months old he helped me find a shot chamois which I was really stoked about.
We have recently taken on a new farm so I've been pretty flat out since February and haven't had a day off or time to do a lot of hunting with Bo but have made sure to keep those basic commands part of his daily routine and we have had one or two half hearted wanders through the bush including a walk that resulted in Bo taking me in on a yearling a few weeks back. We let that one walk.
Fast forward to this morning and I had milked the cows at our home farm and was headed around to the new farm about 7.30am and I decided to take Bo for a quick stroll with the rifle through the forestry and bush on the back of the farm.
We are blessed backing onto the Blue Mountains to have a few deer about and often see them out raiding crops or darting across the road early in the morning or in the evenings.
We parked the truck and started wandering up a track that weaves it's way up through the forestry to a block we have up on the tops that we use for drystock and cutting a bit of silage if there's no stock up there. I had cut baleage off it a few weeks ago as thought I may as well take what feed was on it off before winter as we wouldn't be grazing it anytime soon. I was hoping there might be a deer out on the new growth but no such luck after parking up and waiting for a while... Was probably a bit late and the deer had headed back to the bush.
Whilst skirting around the edge of the block I happened upon a spot where deer had carved quite a track out coming out of the forestry into the open.
I decided since I had Bo with me it would be a good chance to go for a stalk so we dropped down into the forestry and followed the sign to a line between the native and the forestry. We followed this line super slowly as there was a heap of sign and Bo was nose down ground scenting the whole time.
After about an hour of siddling along this line all of a sudden Bo's demeanour changed and he went from ground scenting to very interested air scenting.
He wanted to follow a ridge up so I obliged and followed him, he was stopping every few steps and really tasting the air and I could tell something had his interest, few steps, stop, sniff sniff sniff, couple more steps, sniff sniff, couple more very slow steps, sniff... And he froze, he was fixated on something, tail pointing straight out and nose going a million miles an hour while he was in a rock solid pose, he would quickly glance over at me and then back to his stare, he did this also when we came across the yearling a few weeks earlier so I was pretty confident something was about to go down, I quietly chambered a round all the while straining my eyes in the directing he was looking and then I saw movement just below us and about 15m away, it was a pair of antlers coming towards us and about to crest a rise, sure enough a fallow buck comes up onto the rise and I lift my rifle, Bo sits as he always does when I'm about to fire a shot and as the buck crests the rise quartering on he wore a 270 eldx just in front of the shoulder and dropped on the spot.
To say I was excited was an understatement, I was so full of adrenaline I had to sit down and take in all that just happened in the last 20 seconds. I had fired the shot and chambered another straight away without thinking so once I was sure the buck wasn't getting up I popped it out and we just sat for a few minutes before going in to claim our prize. Gave Bo the find command and he went straight over to the deer followed by a heap of praise, I was smiling from ear to ear and nearly crying at the same time was such an awesome feeling to see a young dog just do everything you had worked on with him and he performed perfectly I was trying to praise him but my voice was choking up, was a real mess haha.
So happy with him and the way he carries himself he really is an awesome pup, he was quite excited about the while thing and then quietly lay down and watched while I did the butchery.
I have quite a bit of meat in the freezer and we are about to move to the new farm so we did the rounds of the staff houses and delivered them all a bit of venison each and back home at our home farm now, Bo is asleep in front of the fire. Can't wait for more adventures! Cheers
Attachment 166543
