It's been a while since Beeman has shot a deer what with various things upsetting the normal balance of things. Recently we have been having a bit of success around a large clear cut which has lots of sign about.
Three weekends back we run into three just on sunrise and I shot a nice yearling for the freezer, the following weekend two spikers were seen at a little over 100 yards and Beeman 's four shots connected with neither so they are still running.
This weekend just gone we were on the prowl again, same area but this time Mrs Beeman was along for the ride. She has a good eye for spotting deer and this day was no exception.
We headed for the block via a road that passes through young pines about 10 -12 feet high and just over the ridge from a nice grassy area that these deer have been frequenting lately. We then hung a left and started down to the grass to look back up to the pine edge.
It was early and a bit gloomy so we stopped and I took a look through the glasses to see if anything was about.
Next minute Mrs Beeman is yelling there's two deer running along the ridge, next thing they were coming back down the way they had gone up but now there was three deer, they stopped and turned and motored back up again in total confusion.
Beeman was out and had them ranged with his range and shoot Swaro and waited for the deer to present a good shot, range 400 yards. A big bald stag stopped and a shot was fired, no real reaction but sounded a bit like a hit, a spiker stopped for a second and the next shot connected as the stag hobbled out of sight.
We shot around to the end of the road which takes you to the other end of the ridge where we figured the deer would escape to but nothing was seen.
I headed to the ridge top from there while Beeman and partner went back to the spot we shot from and came up that way. On reaching the top there was sign everywhere and it was hard to track what was the freshest.
We all started searching for the animals or blood but nothing was found. After several passes by all of us we heard Beeman call out that he had found the spiker. Unbelievably the spiker had dropped one row into the pines and was quite visible but the colour of the deer had made it rather hard to see, Beeman had actually more or less found it by the smell of stag.
The spiker was by no means a baby it had some serious weight to it so luckily after the pictures we could roll him down into a gully then gut him and after a short drag had him on the road.
The big stag that was shot at first wasn't found and there was no sign of blood on a couple of fresh sets of running marks going down into the pines. Despite an extensive search we found nothing of the big boy so we hope he wasn't hit.
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Spotter and slayer with the big spiker
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The deer magnet clear cut
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Smoko
