We are flying off for Christmas on Wednesday, and a couple of days ago my wife says "Ive booked an extra 38kg of baggage so that we can take a suitcase of venison for the relations".
Just like that. Like it drops out of the sky or something.
So yesterday Brian and I headed off for an overnighter to try to fill the order.
After a 2.5 hour drive we were met with really strong NW wind so we had to plan around that. At 5.30pm the first area drew a blank and things were not looking that bright so we split up to double our chances. I had to do a big loop of about 40 minutes to get the wind right for where I wanted to hunt and Brian followed a ridge down towards a likely spot he favours.
Around about 7pm I saw my first deer feeding on a bushy face about 350 yards away. A red spiker. I snuck to 280 yards for a shot but it had disappeared - so I cut around a creek and and got a lot closer, coming out on a little ridge opposite where it had been. I carefully glassed the face and there it was laying down facing me at 75 yards. Its wasn't difficult to neck shoot it at that range with the 7-08 and at the shot it didn't move a muscle. Stone dead.
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I cut around to it to find that it was in great condition with a beautiful red coat.
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So I set about butchering it and loading it all into my pack. Boned out HQ, shoulders on the bone, back steaks and inside steaks.
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It took about 40 minutes to lug my pack to a knob where I could retrieve it later and with 1.5 hours light left I headed off to try my luck again (without my pack and just with my day belt around my waist).
I got myself around to a nice lookout and after about an hour I spied 3 Fallow down the ridge I was on. They were about 400 yards away. I slipped down through the scrub to 300 yards and through the binos I could see they were all spikers. I was on an excellent little spot to shoot from but had to wait a while because they were coming in and out of view through the scrub. Eventually I could line up on a black one so he copped it through the neck. Bang-flop.
I lay there set up in case the others' came into view and after a couple a minutes 2 slightly alarmed Fallow spikers popped onto a clearing on a ridge above their dead best friend. Sooo...I line up on the bigger one and let rip. And they bolted but the one I shot at did act a bit stiffly as they disappeared. Strange, I thought, because it was meant to be a neck shot too.
I got down there and soon found the first one, and then cut up to see if I had hit the 2nd one. Tilly was confused and led me off on what I think was a live scent. So I went back to where it had been and cast around. Blood! I followed it parallel along the face for 80 yards and then it stopped and I could see where it had pitched down the hill on its last death rush. It turned out it was a neck shot but it hadn't broken the spine so it had run until it bleed out.
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So I took the 2 HQ and good bits and lugged them back up to the ridge. And then pin-boned the first one and carried that lot to the ridge. I had 4 HQ and 4 back steaks to carry back - without a pack.
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I carried the whole lot up the ridge for about 40 minutes, and then thought "bugger this" and relayed the load for the last 30 minutes back to where my pack was. It was now about 10pm. Thank God for quads. I walked the 40 mins back to where I had left the quad and soon had the load all tied on.
In the mean time I had had been talking to Brian on the hand held radio and he had shot a young velvet red. So I picked Brian up and we headed fully loaded with te dog on top back to the truck.
We decided not to stay the night - preferring to get home to get the meat chilled.
I dropped Brian off at 1.30am and crawled into my own bed at 3am.
Ive only had 4 hours sleep so an afternoon nap is starting to sound good.
Then we have got all this meat to process and distribute to relations and the charity soup kitchen. I will need to think of a story for the relations about how the deer never had any back or inside steaks though - they are for us.
