cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We Did It! Wow. Wow! What a day! My client today was great. The day was perfect. Literally, there is no way that things could possibly have gone better than they did. I spent some time explaining shot placement to him, taking care to describe how best to use the 'high sh0ulder' shot, which hits the deer in the spine while also knocking out the tops of both lungs. It drops the animal instantly and painlessly, since the central nervous system has been shut directly off. Then I took him down to a small valley (a cwm?) where a stream runs between two dammed ponds. I pointed out to him that this point constituted a funnel, on account of the ponds acting as a natural barrier. Any deer wishing to pass from one area to the other must necessarily be funneled between the 2 ponds down withing this little valley. Then I showed him how to look for tracks to see where exactly they were in the habit of crossing the stream. Having found that place, I set us up on the side of one of the 2 hills with a good vantage down to the crossing. We sat there in ambush for an hour or two, and I explained to him that if/when one or more deer came through, they would run down the far hillside and then screech to a near-halt at the bottom in order to jump the stream without running smack into the other hillside. I told him never to take a shot on a running deer, but that if the deer was still moving at the bottom of the valley to make any sort of loud sound to make the deer stop for a few seconds to listen, during which time he could get a shot off. Then after these several hours I suggested a deer drive, by which I would circle around on foot up the driveway and come around to the scrub pine at the top of the hill where I suspected that deer would be bedded down. Then I would push any such deer downhill, and owing to their nature they would be steered into this funnel and would come to a halt right in front of my client. SON OF A BITCH, IT WORKED. I spooked a deer right where I expected a deer to be. And I sent it running right where it needed to go. And my plan was brilliant. The deer ran down the hill and crossed the stream at precisely the point where I said that a deer must cross. And Gareth watched it slow and the bottom and made a sudden loud noise and it screeched to a halt and he aimed just perfectly and fired the rifle and sent a bullet straight through the beast's spine. It was as neat a thing as ever you could picture. Gareth was practically in tears for joy. He was thrilled. This was, I really think, one of the best days of his life. We shook hands 3 or 4 times and I thought he was really going to cry. He truly had accomplished a stupendous bit of shooting, given the pressure and the fact that he only had about 2 seconds to recall the anatomy lesson, aim, and fire. The man kept a very cool head and got his shot off perfectly and I really think that he has a future in this. We took some photos and then I taught him how to skin and quarter the animal. We stripped off all of the meat and then packed up and went up the hill and over to my parents' house, where I borrowed their kitchen to teach him how to butcher a quarter of venison into actual cuts of meat ready to cook. I also cooked up some small pieces of meat with nothing more than olive oil, salt and pepper in order to demonstrate the un-tarted taste of venison (pretty much like lean beef). He loved it. Here was this thing that was alive and in the brush only a few hours before and yet we were eating mouthfuls of it now. Then I brought him back into town to meet up with his wife and drive back home to DC with the meat. It was a magnificent, red-letter day. Absolutely amazing. If guiding is like that every day, then sign me up. They also tipped me nicely, paying $250 instead of the $200 that was my standard fee for a day. And you know, the neat thing is that the money was just extra. I would have gladly spent this day exactly like that for nothing. Seeing how thrilled this guy was to get his first deer would honestly have been payment enough. One of the interesting things here is that this guy is from South Africa and lived in Ghana for years. He has eaten baboon and vervet monkey, but whitetail deer are exotic to him. Guiding an African for deer, I was the equivalent of the African PH taking an American client out for antelope. I love working as a hunting guide. It was fucking great and I wish I could do it again and again and again every day. I'm good at it and I like my clients and I enjoy watching them have success as hunters far more than I enjoy my own successes. 6:46 p.m. - 2010-11-13 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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