The forecast was for rain, but I thought I would risk it anyway. As I packed my rain coat, I thought of the words of an old farm boss I once had said when I asked him if I should take a coat; “any fool can take a coat on a wet day”...
It was spitting by the time I had trudged out the back, and it soon turned cold and a persistent drizzle set in. It was 4pm, so I set up and sat back with my binos scanning for an early deer.
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An easy one wasn’t to be though, so as dusk set in Tilly and started to work down lower to the bush to get a last chance deer as it came out on dark. As we worked our way down a spur, Tilly put her nose in the air and begin to wind. “Trust the dog” I said to myself so as we crested a rise that would reveal the scattered scrub we couldn’t see into but she was winding into, I slipped a round into the chamber and set the half cock with the safety engaged. It was almost dark now but a quick scan with the binos revealed the creamish colour of a deer, and I could see antlers waving around as it fed. The 250 yards or so was close enough, so I carefully flipped the legs of the bipod on the.243 down, put my pack under the but and prepared for the shot. At first I had to lower the magnification on the vx12 down to 3x, but once I had found it I set it back to 12x for a careful shot. The stag was feeding away from me straight across, and slightly down hill. The satg quartered slightly as it fed, and this presented a shot into behind the shoulder that would rake through the vitals. So I carefully sent a 95 grn Targex off on its fatal journey.
At the suppressed shot the stag leapt forward, and ran strongly down hill. I suspected a good hit because downhill was away from his cover. He appeared briefly about 80 yards away by a creek, and then disappeared. It took Tilly and I about 5 minutes to to get down to near where I had last seen it, ad I held her in until I could get a clear shot if it was a runner, and then sent her. Immediately, her low barking and growling told me that she had a mouth full of deer and that it was all over.
It was a nine pointer, and he hadn’t chosen the best place as his last resting place.
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It took a bit of heaving and maneuvering to get him out of his swimming pool and up onto the creek edge, but succeeded in spite of Tilly thinking it was a game trying to pull against me.
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It was a bog underfoot, and I had to mess around quite a bit as I butchered it in order to keep the meat clean. The drizzle didn’t help, and by the end everything was a bit of a mess. The meat was clean though, and that was the main thing.
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The bullet had struck him through the last rib behind the lungs and had exited out through the very front of the opposite shoulder. It was as I predicted when I squeezed trigger. There was massive damage right through the kill zone. There’s a lesson here...get to know the anatomy of your quarry and this will help you make either effective killing shots, or alternatively will inform you about when to hold off for a more effective angle.
I cut the head off and hung it in the antler tree. It now has three smaller heads hanging in it. One day I will take my silky saw down there, cut the skulls off, and retrieve them.
I had a steep uphill climb to get back onto the ridge top that took about 45 mins, and then another hour’s grind to get back to my truck. It boned out stag is a good weight for an old bastard. We were 2 drowned rats when we dumped out our gear, but pretty damned happy none the less.
