A successful sporting day that eventually delivered two more Red Deer stags from South Strathy & then geese from Loch Saorach
It was another early morning and self-service breakfast before leaving for more red deer stag shooting in South Strathy. I had a little trouble with Nigel getting up on time and we started late and got later but we still made our rendezvous with Chris, the gamekeeper, and got going on a fairly dry morning. The stags proved a bit more evasive than the previous day and we had a long haul stalking one stag up a mountain, only to be seen and lose him, and then another for a mature stag in the open ground. This one was a large beast with a fine head laying down in low ground and we crawled up before I stayed behind with the binoculars and Nigel and Chris crawled right up within range, the last section having to be done by Nigel without his jacket in the cold water-sodden peat.
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The beast would not get up and so Nigel tried a head shot but aimed too high and missed him, it cantering away across and over the hill. We walked back and round in the open, failing to get on another stag for my shot until walking back through some trees, we saw a hind and then a younger stag to give me the possibility of a shot. We crawled along ditches and then I was given the rifle to lean out, laying down for my shot. The stag was walking away, then paused and turned and, bang!!, I got him with a shoulder shot and was the one to find him a few furrows away, his rutting scent first giving evidence of where he lay. We left that forest and, so that Nigel could get a stag, went next to an enclosed hill, unplanted with some red deer plainly visible. It was not really Fountain Forestry land, nor really needed the deer culling as the owner had not yet got planting permission, but we stalked, and Nigel killed an old stag with a poor head quite easily. I was not very impressed with this as the deer seemed almost too vulnerable.
The recovery process and then, saying goodbye and tipping Chris £50, we set off back to Broubster in time for the dusk shoot. We settled ourselves down into the hides around Loch Saorach and soon a flight of geese came in and landed the other side of the loch. Some wheeled round just about in range of my gun but I held my fire, deeming that if I missed the evening's sport would be over and it would be better to leave them to swim across to our side of the loch and then shoot them when we put them to flight. Unfortunately, I had not agreed this strategy with Nigel and, him letting a shot off in the hope that they would fly our way, they were all frightened off in the other direction! Then, to cap it all, by complete chance four geese stayed on the water and then swum right up to Nigel's hide. He shot at them as sitting birds and I was rather annoyed at this lack or sportsmanship as a result.