Gents,

I thought I'd share a few photos from last evening of my son Will's first roe buck and first deer for that matter. We have tried on a few previous occasions but have been snookered by either the wrong sex showing for the season or nothing showing at all.

Anyway, he shot it perfectly at 116 yards from a highseat using my Sako 75 SS in .243 shooting an 85 grn Sierra HPBT and it dropped to the shot. We were in the Cotswolds near the village of Winson in Gloucestershire.













Kind regards,

Tim

Congrats and Gorgeous first Buck for the boy!

That’s a beautiful buck congratulations to Will and a great job to you Tim.

Excellent! And NICE Roe Deer!

That is so cool! Congrats all around.

Beautiful, relish the memory.

Brilliant! The look on your boy's face--and even more so on yours!-- is terrific. Big congrats to you both. A memory to last you both a lifetime, I'm sure.

Excellent experience for you and your son. Congratulations on starting a new hunter right.

Thankyou for your kind words Gents. It was a great evening in family history.

Kind regards,

Tim

Congratulations to you both.

As far as I'm aware, that's a really good Roe Buck, isn't it ?

Great pictures and job well done.

Awesome. Congrats to the young lad and yourself. Thanks for sharing.

Congratulations! Thanks for posting the account and photos.

I’m so glad I opened this thread, it brought a smile to my face. A big congrats to you and your son!

Thanks Paul. I think it had the makings of a very nice buck being nicely proportioned and symmetrical but it's a four pointer rather than a mature six pointer. It's a solid starter for Will though. He wants to have it skull mounted so I'll be sending it off to the taxidermist in the next day or two.

Thanks for all the comments Chaps, we appreciate them.

Kind regards,

Tim

Great job on both your parts! So happy to see the hunting community alive and well there.

You noted "We have tried on a few previous occasions but have been snookered by either the wrong sex showing for the season or nothing showing at all." How complicated are the season and rules there?

Thanks Pugs, there are six species of deer in Great Britain: red and roe that are indigenous and then we also have fallow, muntjac, sika and Chinese water deer that have been introduced at one time or another. The seasons for each species differ slightly between England & Wales and Scotland but there is always something in season regardless of the time of year. The seasons and law are probably best explained in the link below:


https://basc.org.uk/codes-of-practice/deer-stalking/


My brother, Will and I have access to ground in the Scottish Borders near to Moniaive and also in the Cotswolds where Will shot this roebuck.

Thanks for your interest,

Tim

Tim isn’t there a .243 minimum caliber restriction for Roe in England? But not in Scotland? If I remember correctly.

Tim,

Great link! You really do have an extended season. The firearm restrictions are interesting and seem kind of arbitrary between Eng/Wales, Scotland and the UK. There also seems to be little on bow or muzzleloader. Is that because there is no discrimination or little participation?

I was doing some work in Harrogate a few years ago and the opportunity came up to move over for 2-3 years. Pretty country in the north and apparently there was a syndicate looking for members which would have been nice. Alas, my wife had elderly family issues that prevented it. Suppose I'll have to live vicariously through the Keith Calder novels.

The law stipulates that for shooting roe in England and Wales you need a minimum calibre of .240 with a muzzle energy of 1,700 ft lbs. That really means that a .243 is generally taken as the minimum cartridge deemed suitable. In Scotland, a minimum bullet weight of 50 grns and muzzle energy of 1,000 ft lbs and velocity of 2,450 fps is required.

Tim

Bow hunting in Great Britain is illegal and I believe muzzleloaders are precluded since they can't meet the energy/velocity stipulations.

Additionally, handguns have been banned since 1996 which is how I came to end up shooting rifles.

Tim

How sad that it comes to that. Well, unlike us, suppressors are common as your pic shows so at least that makes sense!

[/quote]

How sad that it comes to that. Well, unlike us, suppressors are common as your pic shows so at least that makes sense![/quote]

Yes, trying to find a sporting rifle shooter over here that doesn't use a sound moderator is on a par with the odds of having a winning lottery ticket. They've been in widespread use for many years now.

Tim

That is a fine trophy that young man will remember forever , Great job ........

Tell your son he did a great job.... Good on you too, Dad!

Don't sweat it mate, it is worth knowing there are family men in England.

Well done.

Super, and in an environment where not everyone can have such privileges.

Thanks Gents,

The next step will be to get him his own rifle later this year. I already have a couple of spare scopes to choose from that can be put on it - a Meopta Artemis 6x42 or a Schmidt & Bender Klassik 3-12x42. The problem is choosing the right rifle. These days, the manufacturers seem to be in a race to the bottom to produce the cheapest rifle with the most plastic. I'm thinking of either a clean Sako 75 SS if we can find one or a new Model 70 Extreme Weather. By the time we get the paperwork submitted in the next couple of months, it will probably be Christmas or beyond before his Firearm Certificate is issued. It can be quite a slow process.

I was lucky in finding him what I hope to be a decent pair of binos last Friday - a pair of 8x42 Meopta Meostar B1. They were in an auction and boxed new old stock. They came out at £320 by the time commission and postage were paid. I believe they retail for around the £950.00 mark over here. Will was using my range finder to look through on the evening he shot the buck which wasn't ideal.

Kind regards,

Tim

Congratulations to you both.

Your son will cherish this memory all of his life.

Congrats to father and son.

Thankyou for your continued kind comments Gents.

I picked up a clean Sako 75 .308 stainless synthetic for Will yesterday. I'm taking it to my riflesmith next week to have a spigot cut on the existing M14 muzzle thread for a sound moderator and a general going over and then I'll put it away 'til Christmas.

Kind regards,

Tim

well done!
i am sure you are so proud of him....thanks for sharing

Awesome! Congrats!

Tim1-Keep the pics and hunting stories coming, it's great to see hunting in another part of the world!

I wish someone would buy and drop off a few dozen Roe deer in the US. Would make for an interesting hunt. Any deer are fun to hunt but them Roe Bucks seem very interesting. Congrates to your son for harvesting a fine trophy.

Congratulations on a wonderful hunt for you and your son. Roebuck are fun to hunt and delicious table fare.

+1 I’d love to have Roe in the states.

Thankyou for your renewed interest in this one Gents.

I'll get some more photos up when we hopefully get out again in the New Year. We've hardly been out in the best part of the last two years due to the COVID restrictions. We have access to the ground in Gloucestershire which holds fallow, roe and muntjac and also some in Dumfriesshire near the town of Thornhill that holds mainly roe but with an increasing number of reds.

Kind regards,

Tim

Glad someone bumped this up.

Congratulations to you and your son Tim!

Late to the party, but congratulations and please continue to post your adventures.

Thankyou CRS, I'll see what I can do.

I booked our accommodation in Dumfriesshire yesterday for a few nights towards the end of February. It will be the first time that I've travelled up there in exactly two years due to the COVID restrictions. We should have a good do, especially as Will will be set up with his own rifle by then. I'm very much looking forward to it.

Kind regards,

Tim

Very nice. Hope your February hunt goes well. I've always been fascinated by the deer hunting over there in the U.K. from videos I've seen online. It looks like absolutely perfect land for hunting.

Is deer stalking still fairly common there, or has it become too restricted and/or expensive for widespread participation?

Most excellent.

Thankyou ZCM. If this African variant takes off, there's a chance that we won't be allowed to travel north of the border so the February trip may have to be deferred.

Shooting is a niche activity here and although I have no statistics to base my opinion on, I suspect that it is the least popular shooting activity with target shooting and clay shooting being the most popular. Shotgunning generally whether for game or clays is probably the most popular.

Fingers crossed for February.

Tim

Congratulations!!! Great Roe Buck!!

That's awesome, nothing like the feeling of pride for you children, accomplishing a goal. Nice buck.

Well done, congrats to you both!

Apologies Gents. I've been lazy in following up on our trip to Scotland in February but here's a few more photos that I hope you will enjoy.

Unfortunately, we blanked as the conditions were far from ideal and extremely changeable as you'll see from some of the photos below. We only saw one deer over the course of the weekend but couldn't get on her in time to take a shot before we were rumbled. Anyway, Will still enjoyed it as it was his first trip with his own equipment although the terrain is hard going and he found it difficult to traverse. I invited a forum member over to stalk a few years back and I remember him saying it was the hardest terrain he'd ever hunted on.

We are up again at the end of October during the half term holidays for another go. Hopefully, it will prove more successful. I'll post a few more photos then, possibly starting a new thread rather than continuing on this one.

Enjoy the photos.

Tim

Looks like a great time together anyway in beautiful countryside.

That's some pretty scenery. Is it fairly common to get snow in February there?

Sorry to hear you got blanked, but at least your boy had fun on the trip. I hope your hunt in October is a success.

ZCM82,

Snow falls fairly frequently in the Borders area of Scotland and of course further north. Occasionally, it falls quite heavily in the Borders but in the main it will be a skittering or perhaps up to 4" or so but soon thaws.

Where I live in Cheshire near to Manchester, snow is almost unheard of these days.

Tim

Even with nothing ending up on the ground it's well worth time spent out in the open in that country. The weather? Spice for the story. Thanks for sharing.

Nice pictures! thanks for sharing

Is Scotland generally preferred to England for getting a good free-range Roebuck?

All depends on where you are. I used to live in Yorkshire (born and raised) and I had plenty of good sized Roe around me. I also hunted in Scotland on a lease some of the guys from the local US military base had and the roe were few and far between. Hunting in the UK can be mysterious to many who haven't lived there. Essentially, all the game on a piece of property belongs to the land owner rather than the state. The state/government takes no real active part in preserving/conserving any wildlife for the use and enjoyment of citizens other than regulating seasons and methods of harvesting them.

Therefore, it is up to individual land owners how they manage the wildlife on their property and why I think (of course, I may be a bit biased) that the UK is a true sportsman's paradise. Seasons are very long, there are no draws, no tags and no bag limits. The only down side is finding somewhere to hunt. I was fortunate that I grew up in the hunting scene and locally, had no shortage of opportunities to hunt. My father and I managed 450 acres of land for a family who gave us a free hand to do as we wished as long as there were pheasants to shoot on 3, formal, driven hunts per season.

We controlled the vermin on the estate such as crows, magpies, foxes, stoats, weasels and other egg stealing and pheasant eating predators to assist the wild population of pheasants which also helped song birds and other non game species. We took about 400 rabbits a year from this property too, most of them ending up on our or other friend's tables. Because we were in the 'circle' of game keepers as they are called, we had no problem getting invites from property owners to help them with rabbit issues and then this led to deer culling opportunities. So, as I said, it depends on where you are and who you know. I miss hunting in the UK.

I have a friend who did a 3 year exchange tour with the USN to RAF flying Nimrods with 42 Squadron from RAF St Mawgan (and lots of time in RAF Kinloss Scotland) and he and the squadron were always working on their lease, raising pheasants and in general really caring for the property and game as they saw fit. He really enjoyed the experience. Lots of plusses and some minuses to both models.

My fairly limited research didn't indicate any preference for England vs Scotland as it pertains to roe bucks, though for quality mainland Europe seems to be preferred. I hunted them in Norfolk and had a blast, taking a nice old buck and a cull doe. I am not sure there are any non free range roe bucks in the British Isles but I guess I could be wrong, and it may also depend on a person's definition of "free range" as some estates are bigger than some islands that are hunted. They're so intensively managed where I was that I didn't find them hard to hunt at all, but they were for sure wild, free roaming animals.



Good job to the OP!

They’re beautiful deer definitely on my bucket list!

RH,

All roe stalking is fair chase. I'm afraid that I'm not a trophy hunter and so far from an expert. Prior to the buck that Will shot at the start of this thread, I would have to check my records to recall the last one that I shot. We tend to concentrate on the winter months for the does as the hours are better and there is no chance of midges. However, I would say that there are good bucks available in Scotland although arguably the best ones are from south of the border as the food sources are that much better.

Thanks for your interest.

Tim