Last weekend I fiddled with the trigger on my gamo trying to making lighter and ended up screwing the trigger screw all the way through so it wouldn't fire. Pulled it apart completely but it still wouldn't fire when I re-installed. Spent a few days and hair pulling to work out that I hadn't installed it properly again - the top sear has to go under the bottom of the barrel so the slide can move all the way back to be caught by the sear
Somehow the gods of hunting were looking after me yesterday and we ended up with an unplanned day off in the middle of vintage (as in the first ever in 20+ years
) due to works outside our control.
After banking some brownie points with the family in the morning, I headed off about 3 with the idea of doing a bit of scouting on the way to the big open area I found a while ago with the plan to sit and wait the evening out while hopefully bumping into a fallow on the way. Google maps had indicated another couple of areas of open area, one of which I'd skirted last year and the other would be new.
I parked the car at the top of the first area, and slowly dropped off the road down through the mixed dogwood and understory, putting up something that almost sounded deery but I never got to see it. The area looked ok, but it didn't have much other than the open area for grazing as a drawcard. I worked my way further down and then edged over the finger ridge in towards the next clearing. As I made my way down the inside of one of the finger ridges, I put up a young sambar on the opposite face from a small patch of thick brush above me. It was hard going in the dry leaves/grass, moving quietly was almost impossible but I eventually reached the forest road below me that worked its way up the other side of the finger ridge back to the main road higher up. Slowly following an abandoned road I worked along up the gully towards the clearing where a side gully joins the main creek. It certainly looked deery and the bigger clearing was only just around the ridge on the opposite side of the creek from me. As I reached the join in the gullies, there was a fairly sharp rocky point which was enhanced by a mullock heap or two from a mineshaft above me. I was sitting about 20m above the creek bed and had a fair view of the other side, the face on the high side of the Y junction, and a little way up the side gully. There wasn't any easy rests to shoot from, so I ended up sitting next to a dark stringy-bark hoping that my dark shirt would blend in making me invisible. Further up the main gully was a thick patch of blackberries, wattles and other brush which I figured would be the most likely place for the deer to bed during the day. Following Errol Mason' idea of the wagon wheel approach, I assumed they'd be making their way down the face somewhat down from the top of the finger ridge, hopefully low enough for me to see/shoot them. There was a very well used game trail only a few meters above the creek bed on the opposite face, but I wasn't able to pick any further up the slope.
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As I sat there, I noticed a black wallaby feeding in the blackberries below me, and some time later it's young offspring. I was able to watch them for the next couple of hours as I waited for the evening twilight to arrive, and hopefully the deer to start moving. I watched another pair of wallabies on the opposite face make their way down to the creek and later on could hear something that sounded larger pushing it's way through what sounded like the dead leaves of a fallen tree. Despite some scanning with the binos, I was never able to locate the animal but I did hear the emphysemic cough of a buck 'roo. Slowly the light dwindled, and as I watched the usual wrens, robins, rosellas and a lone whipbird cavort in the dying light a deer was suddenly in the open on the far side, just below the thickest part of foliage. It quickly moved through the small gap and made it's way down the ridge, slowly feeding as it went. It vanished behind some foliage of trees on the far side, but another younger deer appeared in the same clearing but a little higher up. I'd ranged it at a little over 100m, but there was no way I was happy with any shooting position I could get into so I hoped I'd have another chance as they went through a window 100m or so further down the ridge, almost directly opposite where I was sitting. Quietly I moved to the other side of the tree I was sitting next to, chambered a round and got into the best position I could. After 10min or so I began to wonder if they'd moved over the brow of the ridge above them as I could hear shuffling in the leaves occasionally but eventually the hind came through the clearing but was walking much too quick to take a shot and when she did stop I had some more leaves/branches of the trees below her covering her up. She kept moving down the trail, and eventually disappeared behind the covering leaves.
I could still hear the second hind coming down, and 5min or so later she stepped out behind a trunk of a tree 10m below her, before doubling back behind it again. By this time I had the best rest I could, but the shakes had started to kick in
She must have missed some tasty morsel, as she quickly turned back downhill and stepped out into the opening. By this time it was getting towards 30min or so of shooting light - plenty to see and shoot by, but not much to get work done in the light. I still wasn't sure if I wanted to pull the trigger. It's a hell of a lot of hard work to deal with a sambar, even just taking the backstraps and possibly sirloins on a seriously steep and blackberried slope followed by a steep walk out felt like too much for a knackered body as mine right now. In the end I lined up a few simulated shots but didn't pull the trigger. No shot's a gimme, but at ~75m dead broadside I felt very confident it would have ended well and chalked up the experience as a win before grabbing the bag and rifle and making my way back to the car.
With 2 days off and 2 half days at work over easter and no family at home, I'll be putting in a few more yards to try and meet up with a fallow at some stage. The next one might not be so lucky, venison steaks from a backstrap always go down well