Well I have had an epic start to 2018. We have had our oldest boy down from Tauranga over the last 8 weeks. He has drunken me out of house and home, the recycling glass bin is groaning under empty's and I am sure the neighbours have labeled me a massive piss head. Food bill could have feed a small African nation .
Anyway we have always shot rabbits together since he was 7-8 years old and he loves the outdoors. like me he is a varmint shooter but I thought he might like to try for a deer.
Over the last 3-4 months I have put a rifle together for Deer on a limited budget of a grand, came in around $1075 all up.
I had been offered a Station to shoot with both Red's and Fallow so living in Central I wanted to make the most of the opportunity
and see if we could get the young fella his first deer.
We have done a lot of rabbit shooting over the last 8 weeks with just under 900 bunny's taken and even two wild pigs shot with the .22 s .
With him shooting well I brought the 7.08 mm out for some target practice before the real thing. Turns out the wanker can shoot very well and the cheap second hand Rem 700 is no slug either ( see target )Attachment 80697
The target is a two shot group at 120 mtrs in the wind, I only let him shoot two shots as I couldn't bear the shit I would get if the third shot touched the other two.
So a day was set and we were up early and away , met the station owner and got some rough directions and thoughts on where to go. Now this place is very big and the hill's have to be experienced to be believed , this is big open dry country that happened to hit 32 degrees plus this day, fuck it was hot.
We were walking and glassing for 5 hours before I spotted 4 Fallow out of cover and feeding about 1.5 kms away, The stalk in was tricky and open so we were moving slowly . The wind though was in our favour ( for once ) , about 200 mtrs out I noticed a shape under a Matagouri bush and a look through the bino's showed a fallow Hind looking straight at us. We sat down behind some scrub and waited, after 15 mins she lost interest and casually walked into a big patch of scrub and disappeared never to be seen again . We decided to move into a better shooting position and close a little of the distance down, after 40 mins baking in the sun nothing had happened and we were getting fried . Now I am not an experienced deer hunter and I don't even overly enjoy it so I was running through the limited options we had left.
I noticed the gully we were shooting kept on going up and dog legged to the left and we couldn't see further up however there was a nicely elevated knoll that would offer us a good position to cover the rest of the gully and allow us to slightly be able to look down and into the scrub so we headed off for the knoll. By now the wind was starting to swirl and to be honest I thought we had probably lost our opportunity.
We quietly got to the top of the hill and looked down into the gully , suddenly a Fallow hind jumped up and disappeared into the scrub face opposite us. I dropped onto my arse and the lad who was 30 mtrs to my left did the same, he hadn't seen the hind at this stage but knew I had by my reaction so was ready and watching.
I had the bino's up scanning when the rifle roared, nearly shit myself . I couldn't see the deer but from his postion it had walked out and presented a perfect broadside shot at 90 mtrs, next thing she was sliding down the scrub face and it was done.
We sat quietly for a minute to make sure she stayed down but by that stage she wasn't even kicking. Now the boy isn't an emotional type of kid but the grin on his face said it all and it was an epic father / son moment that I will never forget and I don't think he will either. We quietly walked down to the animal and took some photo's and boned her out.
The walk out was horrendous in full sun and 30 plus heat, my legs are still sore 3 days later but worth it.Attachment 80699
I guess what is super special for me is my old man was dead from a heart attack at 48 and we did fishing together but his heart was shot and despite me being hunting mad we couldn't do it together , a family friend would take me out sometimes but the rest is self taught so to be able to do this together is a massive thing for me and hopefully him.:thumbsup:
