Thread: new deer stalking technique

I have shot a lot of deer both here in England and Scotland but this has to be the strangest ever .I took a friend up to the west coast of Scotland (Argyll) where I lease 3000 acres ,he is new to deer stalking but is an experienced shotgun shooter. We have Red, Sika and Roe on this ground .I was hoping that the Sika deer were rutting as it was October but it was unusually warm and the Sika rut just wasn't happening. There was very little movement of deer that week ,but I took him to a big open very boggy and somewhat dangerous area ( large area's of it are just a floating raft of moss and scrubby grass with little under it should you break through, and I will not even try to walk on it, but the deer tend to like this area. Red deer particularly like this area as it is surrounded by hills. We sat there on a hill for some time just seeing a sika hind way off in the distance, I gave a red stag call and sure enough a stag answered almost 1 mile away. I eventually spotted a very large stag with 3 hinds on a hill at the far edge of our ground. I decided to take my friend the following morning to that spot walking or should I say struggling along the bank at the edge of the boggy area, eventually getting to a hill covered in bracken above where I had seen the stag the previous day. I gave one or two calls and we waited there for 2-3 hours but there was no answer from the stag and I think he had moved over the hills which is not our ground. We did spot a Sika hind but that is all. We decided to go back along the bank to the position we had started from, a faily ardious treck over very rough and boggy ground, finally getting to where we had first started which was a very rough grass ride at the edge of our boundary, we decided to have a break here to have a cigarette and coffee and sat down in the long grass, talking normally ,I had my back to the ride and my friend Dan was facing -looking up the ride. Dan suddenly said SHIT at the top of his voice and pointed behind me , I turned but couldn't see anything for the long grass so I pushed my way through this grass in a prone position, to my amazement there stood a red deer spiker at only 15 yards -safety off ,scope full of deer and I shot it .I have never in all my years of deer hunting shot one that close before.