Sunday proved to be a very wet one, but my hunting buddies were keen despite the forecast so off we went in the early hours of the morning. We all went to a new area to all of us, and departed our own ways and had arranged to meet up in the afternoon for the walk out. I had chosen an area relatively easy to walk with a creek running into a major catchment which would take 4-5 hours to hunt. The sun had come out (first time I had seen sun in kaimais) and I was extremely happy with the feel of the place. I began a slow walk following animal trails, but with no deer sign I was not fully alert. Across the other side of the creek I could make out a clearing up a small incline, with the sun beating down on it. Rude not to check it out I thought. On reaching the edge, I immediately looked up a gully which fell into the clearing, but something 20m to my right in my peripheral was screaming at me to look. My eyes flicked to the right and there was a hind standing side on looking at me. The rifle instinctively rose, bolt closed, crosshairs on the chest. Not having sighted in my rifle due to recent modifications, I made a small correction and chose the base of the neck. Squeezed the trigger, and she fell like a tonne of bricks. I got to her quickly and put a final shot in the head. Not necessary as she was almost gone, but just out of respect. Got to work gutting and cutting her up, and heard some noise in the direction of which I had come. This is where it gets weird. There looking on was 2 deer having a nosey at what I was doing. Once they had seen me stand up, they high tailed out of there. Very unusual I thought as they had come exactly the way I had come and would have got wind of my scent, let alone heard both of my shots.
So after hunting for 8 years, mostly on private land, I had secured my first public deer. Very satisfying to say the least. Especially for my 3rd trip into the Kaimais.
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