First Work Morning

Just a few pics from Saturday's first work day of the year.
The first two are of the proposed new site of a release pen on the Island, hopefully the farm will give the go ahead which will give a home to 100 poults come July. Tristan brought his hawk along, Hannibal, for a few hunts. Plus, it's good to see the cock birds in full colour, the pictured one just was too modest to pose properly. Thanks to the attending, Smudge, Keith, David, Kevin, Greg and Tristan.

Roe Doe from Yorkshire

Tower Watch

Saturday morning sat in a high tower with 3 good clearings to keep an eye on. Pictures taken just before sun up with the alarm setting off at 3 am to start the proceedings. Although everything looked promising no Fallow or Roe appeared in front of me. Two Fallow were shot earlier.

I've got until the end of April to try and bag a Fallow buck.

The .243 was checked on a range later that morning and all ok, so hopefully I'll get a chance.

Have I done the right thing!

Saturday just gone involved a trip down to East Sussex to take Cody to her new home. After months of deliberations I came to the conclusion that she needed a home that could look after her without any doubts so off to Tim's we went.


Cody is 6 this year and I wanted her to have pups before it was too late, unfortunately I could not cater for this as work would get in the way, doesn't it always, plus as it is a one man house there would be no one around during the working week to look after pups etc.


It is a big heart wrench to give a dog away, it was not a nice drive home at all and the house seems a lot quieter without her.


I do hope that at some stage she is able to have pups as I would love to have one of her off spring as do need a trained up gun dog to replace Charlie who has retired from the front line. He even struggles now on a decent walk. It would be a great pleasure to train one of her pups so fingers crossed.

Here's to Cody.

Cute!

Haven't seen the little one's on the forest for a few years until Sunday just gone, yep went soft for a few minutes and couldn't resist a couple of pics.

Roe Doe Cull

I must learn how to smile when in front of the camera!
Saturday morning was on the farm at Winchester to try and catch up with a doe. Stephen joined me as an additional spotter. We started off stalking the hedge row and game strip below the cow sheds in the near dark. Something animal like was glassed in the distance so we proceeded to close the gap hoping that it is was a roe. To our surprise it was two reynard's mating, as we again moved a little closer the game was up and they decided to move away although they did not disappear completely, the range was a little to far to take a shot at.
At this point no deer were out so we back tracked to go around the top cow shed and stalk the hedge rows around the whole field. Half way down the main wood a stop over to wait and see if anything was moving when Stephen spotted a running fox coming our way. Rifle on the stick ready, but it wouldn't stop to the squeak so took a shot as it just reached the fence line. It looked like a clean miss until a bit of fox fur and blood spotted although no body was found, probably given it a nice scar to show off to it's mate.
Due to the shot taken we assumed that the morning's stalk was over on this field until another 100 yards walk before Stephen motioned to get down as he had spotted a deer head just above the horizon.
Eventually three deer came into view, two doe's and one buck in velvet. Time to keep the nerve as all three knew we were there. After a ten minute wait one of the doe's presented a good target and was duly dispatched.
She is now hanging in the chiller unit at home in the garage.
Spent the rest of the weekend two steps away from the loo due to catching a lovely stomach bug..........

Last Day

Just a couple of pictures from the last season day. One showing Kevin holding the vixen he shot on the Sedge Bed drive and the other showing the grand total bag for the day. We only had two dogs, Cody and Buddy so the bag was to be expected as it was another cold day thus any scent difficult to find.

It won't be long before we start planning for next season with prep work to start soon, first job is to get the empty feeders back in the yard before any thing happens to them.

Plan to try and stalk a few does over the next few weeks plus try our luck on the lamping front.