BELGIUM: A Meeting With A Roebuck

VertigoBE

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I'm still a bit euphoric writing this, shooting my first roebuck yesterday afternoon!

Together with some close friends we now have our own hunting fields in Wallonia (southern Belgium), so we decided to do some hunting. Wild boar and fox are open year round, and since the first of May, the yearly roebuck season is also open in Belgium.

As some of you know already I have no love for driven hunts, so the mode of hunting we used was Pirsh or treestand still hunting. For the past two weeks I have been going to the hunting grounds, getting up at 2:45 in the morning, to drive 1h30 and be on the field and in the stand by 4:30 in the morning. Together with my 'hunting mentor' (named R.) we then hunt until around 9:00, go back to his place for some coffee and breakfast, do some odd chores or rest up and by 17:00 we are back in the tree stand until about 22:00, after which I take the 1.5h drive back home.

The very first day we went out like this, we had already seen this big "spitzer" old roebuck running around in the fields. As is often the case for these old animals, very intelligent and wary of the smallest movement or sound. As these "spitzer's" or "daguet" in French (dagger), do not have all the forks on their rack like they should have, they frequently injure or even kill other roebuck. So this was definitely a good one to take.

I will not bore you with all the times we went out, saw him from afar, running at high speed or just catching glimpses of him and his girlfriend, but I'll jump to yesterday afternoon.

We were on the field and in the treestand by around 17:30, starting to settle in for what promised to be a long wait, as we usually saw him around 20:30-21:30, with daylight fading.

IMG_3039.jpg

on the treestand with my Mauser M03

Around 18:15 however, I saw him running left to right just at the edge of the tree line to right of the picture. Chased by his girlfriend as usual. Where they come from and how they suddenly appeared like that, only the roedeer gods know. I immediately whispered to my friend that it was "our" buck. We expected them to continue to the right and end up in a field right behind us, where we had spotted them before. So very gently I started turning around on the seat, in order to have a chance of a shot through the trees onto the next field. No later had I fully turned left (I'm right handed), awkwardly half-seated, with my legs hanging out of the stand, or R told me that the roe deer (the girlfriend) had returned in front of us and was just behind the left-to-right fence you see in the middle of the picture.

As I was already in position looking the other way around, for the buck, this was unlucky, but we decided to keep in position like this. About 30min later, starting to get cramps in my back and legs from all the twisting I hear "don't move, the buck just came out 30m from us". In front of course. Now the trick to move in front of game is to only move when they are grazing so that is what we did. R told me "move", then "stop", while I was still turned and could not see anything, and we played this game with the buck every time he put his head down. After about 10min of moving bit by bit, getting the rifle pointed in the right direction again, my knees and legs untangled from the high seat, I had him in full view, about 50m from us at that point. He was looking straight at us, realising that something was wrong, there was too much noise, too much movement probably, and he was getting ready to bolt. Luckily I had remembered to put my scope at the lowest magnification before having done all the maneuvres (thank you AH!) so it just remained a question of cocking the rifle, cross in the middle of his chest and squeezing. He dropped like a stone (then again a .300 WinMag on a 25kg animal will do that)

The euphoria I felt and giddiness after... we could not contain ourselves. So many times this old warrior had slipped us by, never giving a good opportunity. And now we finally got him! This will be another amazing memory for a lifetime!

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thanks for reading!

V.
 
Great story! Congrats on your first roe buck!
It is a moment and accomplishment youwill remember and cherish all your life!

The beauty of hunting roe deer, is exatcly as you have described... you never know what happens next, they are so unpredictable till last moment in some ways, in another, we always know their teritorry, and meaddow where they will appear.

So till last moment, it is always cat and mouse game!

Here is attached my spiker, as of this year. He was leading a herd of 6 does...

roe deer 2021.jpg
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Proficiat met je rodeer!!!!
 
Great story! Congrats on your first roe buck!
It is a moment and accomplishment youwill remember and cherish all your life!

The beauty of hunting roe deer, is exatcly as you have described... you never know what happens next, they are so unpredictable till last moment in some ways, in another, we always know their teritorry, and meaddow where they will appear.

So till last moment, it is always cat and mouse game!

Here is attached my spiker, as of this year. He was leading a herd of 6 does...
Indeed, even though they are quite territorial, and tend to revisit the same places almost every day, they are like small ghosts, you never know what will happen or where they will pop out. And especially these older bucks, they lived that long because they pay very close attention to what happens around them, eating a bite, looking up, eating (or even faking eating) another bite, looking up quickly again... then running some for no reason... At the first sign of danger they bolt, not to be seen again for a few days.

A beautiful spiker too @mark-hunter! Waidmannsheil! Taking that spiker with 6 does will be a good thing, some place for better genetics.
 
Thanks for writing the story and photos. I hope you get chance to hunt a few more this year. I really enjoy hunting roe bucks, but I’ve only hunted them during the rut. Here’s one of my bucks from France that’s missing the forks, but not as old as yours is.
92F0D226-D307-43FD-BD4D-4C13EF913189.png
 
Thanks for writing the story and photos. I hope you get chance to hunt a few more this year. I really enjoy hunting roe bucks, but I’ve only hunted them during the rut. Here’s one of my bucks from France that’s missing the forks, but not as old as yours is.
View attachment 401766
where in France did you hunt @375Fox ? That is a very big buck too, also a daguet or spitzer I would say. Very good to take these out of the gene pool as they wound or even kill to many other bucks.

For me it was the first time on roe deer, and likely the last this year, unless somewhere a really underperforming buck happens to pass by. Now the focus will be fox and wild boar.
 
where in France did you hunt @375Fox ? That is a very big buck too, also a daguet or spitzer I would say. Very good to take these out of the gene pool as they wound or even kill to many other bucks.

For me it was the first time on roe deer, and likely the last this year, unless somewhere a really underperforming buck happens to pass by. Now the focus will be fox and wild boar.
That was east of Toulouse in France. I also hunted them NE of Warsaw in Poland. I would like to hunt them everywhere. Eland are my favorite African animal to hunt, but Roe Buck are my favorite animal to hunt without question. Here are my best bucks from poland and France.
325A730D-1F71-49FF-86F1-284E33D6937F.jpeg
377326B3-B147-42F7-BC28-11B0F19C96B9.jpeg
BC8FA86F-7AED-4FA8-97C0-C1366AE1F4DC.jpeg
92634328-3729-453D-A116-EA73AFE6C2DD.jpeg
 
Beautiful buck in a beautiful country! On our ride from Brussels to Bruges, we passed some lovely country that I thought might have some good hunting! Some days I really miss Belgium. Its good to know there's still some game country there!
 
Lovely deer each and every one. Thank you for sharing. Planning to be in the Gredos Mountains of Spain next spring for Ibex and a couple of Roe bucks (or Rehwild/ Rehbock as we said back in the day when I hunted them in Germany). Truly special animals.
 
Congrats and thanks for sharing!
 
Congratulations on your hunting area and on a fine roebuck! Looks like some beautiful country to hunt.
 
Congrats for your roebuck, a good one to take out.

Here´s one I took back in 2017

IMG_0567.JPG
 

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