Thread: Houghton Hall - Private Estate.

I haven’t managed to get out hunting since leaving New Zealand in August of last year to embark on my overseas experience. Not long after arriving, I joined up with several online hunting forums and began sharing my experiences and contributing information when and where I could. Before long, offers to go hunting started rolling in. However, six months later and I am still waiting on all except of these guys to get back to me with ‘dates’ despite being impatient and sending them friendly reminders from time to time.

I began exchanging private messages with one guy in particular and before long, we had confirmed dates and I was able to book time off work. Three weeks later, I found myself being picked up in the early hours of the morning and I was off hunting for the weekend.

We were to be hunting on the private estate of ‘Houghton Hall’ – (residence of David Cholmondeley, 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley). Exploring the grounds of this place was an experience in itself. There were over 20 different species of deer on the place – mostly of Asian origin.


Houghton Hall.

The hunt itself was very different to what I am used to back home in New Zealand. Generally, it involved us stalking down ‘rides’ (vehicle tracks) through the wooded areas and scouting for deer along the way. There were two main species to be targeted for the weekend,


Typical hunting environment - 'rides'.


High seat - plenty of these around.

Muntjacs are an incredibly small and agile deer and very seldom do they stand still. When you also factor in the size of these deer in relation to the height of the vegetation on the ground (spring time) – spotting and being able to shoot the deer proved challenging at times. Both males and females were in season.


Muntjac - young buck.

Roe deer on the other hand are slightly larger in size but are a lot more cunning. At this particular time of the year, females were out of season and just as luck would have it; we predominantly only saw females and what males were seen, were a little frisky and already on the move.


Roe deer - there are two (third hidden) deer in this photo.

In total I saw around 50-60 deer for the two days hunting. Of those seen, around 30 were Fallow (out of season); around 10-12 Roe (all except two were female and out of season) and around 15-20 Muntjac – of which I shot two good bucks off sticks using a custom built .300wsm.


First Mutnjac.


Second Muntjac.


Shooting of the sticks.

The game keeper managed to shoot around a dozen Fallows throughout the weekend. Although out of season, he has a special permit to harvest them if they are caught eating the estates crops – as they were. When processing the animals for the chiller – he informed me that just last week his beloved Sambar stag ‘Sammy’ had passed away at 17 years of age. I couldn’t resist a photo with the head.


Sammy.

Despite not shooting a roe buck it was an amazing weekend. I’ve been invited back up to the estate the Roe buck rut and the opening of fallow season – can’t wait.

Fingers crossed I can shoot a Roe buck before returning back to New Zealand later in the year.

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