1
Reid’s buck,
still holding
does in late May,
a week before he
was shot.2
Finally on the
ground af ter
five months of
scouting and some
frustration.ON THIS
SPREADwhen he was on the property next
door. The rut was just starting to
ramp up and I saw the big fella
being shadowed by a white menil
buck with a good right palm, but a
weak forky left which must have
given my big boy a stabbing as the
white buck had all the girls and
my buck didn’t even try and fight
back. He did take his frustration
out on a poor spiker who didn’t get
out his way quick enough, which
was quite funny to see.
I took the first two weeks off
work in April to try and pinpoint
and hunt him again, but still no
luck. At this stage, I was
beginning to think that some other
lucky hunter had shot him. I
hunted every day for a fortnight in
April, I saw plenty of deer, but no
big fella. I couldn’t even see him
next door, which I glass into, from
a prominent hill.
The farmer’s son, who is my age,
was beginning to wonder what all
this deer hunting was about, or
whether I was mad maybe! He
came out with me at the tail end of
the rut to see what all the fuss was
about. We nearly walked straight
into a two-year old buck not long
after leaving the 4WD. The young
fella had copped a towelling, asevident by his roughed up hide and
the limp he now had. It was
nothing serious he wouldn’t
recover from, so we let him be,
despite the normal “shoot on sight”
reaction from the farmer and his
son. The hunt for the big fella was
more serious than that, the culling
would have to wait until after the
rut. As we neared the western
boundary, I did my usual glassing
next door, just to make sure. There,
only 400m away over the fence was
my big boy, casually rounding up
his girls, numbering about 20 or so,
which I was quite happy about.
I gave my binos to Andy so heW W W.SPORTINGSHOOTER.COM.AU | 152