Mojave
WKR
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2019
- Messages
- 2,455
Area hunted Brdo Castle and Silenica Mountains of Slovenia.Rifle, Blaser R8 8x57 with a Zeiss V8 2-14x50
Binoculars Swarovski EL 8x42 TA
Clothing Whites Mountain boots, Kuiu clothes. Browning pants
This hunt started with problems. Initially caused by me, as I couldn't sleep on Friday night and woke up at one AM to drive to Slovenia. I ended up getting to the hotel at 10 AM and calling the outfitters I had booked with to see if they were interested in me hunting on Friday afternoon or Saturday morning. I had booked to start hunting chamois on Saturday afternoon and hunt fallow bucks on Sunday afternoon and Monday morning.
The guide sent me a text indicating that I couldn't hunt at all Saturday and he would meet me at the hotel at 6 am on Sunday morning.
My fallow buck guide Miha (think Balky Baltokomos from Perfect Strangers the TV show) responded that he would be able to hunt at 5 am at on Saturday morning and he saved me. The fallow buck location was at one of Tito's old hunting area from the old Yugoslavia days. So there I was at 5 am ready to go. My guide was a 40 year old Slovenian who had been a mountain climber his whole life. He was about 6'3 and if he weighed 170 pounds I would be shocked. He had worked for the Slovenian government as a forester and professional guide for 15 years, all of this at Brdo Castle. Because all the hunting areas in that area are owned by the Government, he also guided in the mountains for chamois, brown bear, stags, and ibex.
We had a coffee from a coffee machine in the break room and kind of told each other our life stories. Was interesting that he had travelled and climbed all over the Western United States. He tackled the Tetons, Smith Rock, Devils Tower and quite a few other big mountain climbs.
At some point the fog broke a bit and there was enough light to get moving and we jumped into a Lada Niva a Russian 4x4 SUV from the Cold War Era. We got into the hunting area and he says, let's walk I'm cold. So we walked into a big clearing and using thermal we could see through he fog that there were about 8 or 9 red deer and about 20 fallow deer in a big clearing in the forest.
We watched a calf feed from its mother and he told me that this was a bad shooting location because there was a village behind the clearing. So we backed off and walked through the forest on a trail to the other side of the meadow to see if we could sort out the a fallow buck from the rest. The fallow doe feeding her calf barked and flagged her tail and all hell broke loose and everything was empty.
So we repeated the process 2 or 3 more times in other meadows looking for a big one. Eventually we found a big buck sitting on the ground behind about 20 does and spikes. We waited for about an hour for him to stand up and he never did. His girlfriends finally left but he stayed and so we backed out and looked for another buck. A couple of empty clearings, and a couple of small spikes and does later we decided to return to that buck and see if he was still there. He was.
It was decided that he would start walking to the side of the clearing and I would watch the buck from the ground blind and when he stood up, I would take him. So a couple of minutes later with a dead rest, he walked out, the buck stood up and bang he was dead. He was an old buck with a lot of broken points, later aged at 6 years old. My fist fallow buck.
In Europe there is a big tradition of drinking to the animal. We had a shot of some kind of schnapps (not that candy flavored American stuff) this is more like tequila, and of course a beer.
We cleaned the buck in their really nice butcher shop, doing the gutting in the building. I did not intend to get this buck mounted, as I didn't know if was a big buck or just a good buck. But he was a nice buck to me, and I am very happy with him.
We had lunch in town and returned to his office for the afternoon beer. Well beer and hunt. We had some time to kill to give the forest a rest and he told me about the Tito timeframe and how many of the trophies in the office were from Tito himself. there were capercaillie, a brown bear, red stags, chamois, fallow bucks and roe bucks. Was quite a collection in a very small space. For some reason I never pulled my phone out to take a photo of this. Sorry.
With the beer settled and the fog rolling in a bit, we decided to get back after it while we could. I wanted another buck, I didn't actually have any idea how much the buck I shot cost. They do everything by CIC measurement. A bit of a challenge. But I had enough cash in my pocket, and he told me not to worry about it. So I didn't.
We found a good black colored fallow buck in a clearing at about 2 pm. He was a good long tall buck and the not-so-normal fallow deer color of chocolate as Americans call it or black as it is called in Europe and Australia. I didn't have the same kind of rest, and I shot him as he was fighting a pine tree on a rub. We never found him, never found blood, and never found any hair. I don't know what had happened. So after about 3 hours of looking he gave me a mulligan and we went to look for another buck.
The third buck was with another buck and 4 red stags. He was clearly the biggest buck I saw and huge. The group was in heavy fog and we sat and waited for the fog to lift a big. We had some wind in our face, and eventually it got clear enough for me to shoot. He was facing me and I shot in the left shoulder and the bullet made it to the stomach and stopped. The distance was measured at 150 meters using google maps on my phone. It was a guess. As there was too much fog for either range finder to work. We actually thought we lost the buck and I walked right past him. If you can see from the photos, there was some orange brown ferns about shoulder height. I got lucky and he died within 40 yards. No ground shrinkage on this buck either and he was 10 CIC points bigger.
We had another beer and processed the 2nd deer and cleaned all the meat off the skull. I paid him for the hunts, a nice tip and we departed ways.
Sunday morning my chamois guide was late and showed up at 635 am. His name was Tinaj and he had been in this hunting area since the 1980's, he was 65. If my fallow buck guide was Balky Baltakomos this guy was the count from Sesame Street. Except he looked like an old bald elf from Fred Claus. Wearing knickers, and tall socks. Like I said earlier, he talked like the Count. He was kind of a poopy pants elf from the start. Complained that he was hunting on Sunday, that he couldn't retired, and never really stopped. If his mouth was open he was complaining.
We drove up to the hunting area, straight up past a parking lot into the mountains, through a deep valley drainage and eventually got to a big clearing at the top of the drainage that was surrounded by mountains. The mountains formed the Austrian border. We hiked up a smaller drainage to a big park, and then up the big park to a saddle between the border mountain Selenica and another smaller round top mountain covered with timber. Eventually when we got to the top we saw the first chamois of the day. 4 or 5 bucks and does about 700 yards away. Where the chamois were on Selenica was at least 5 climbers headed to the top. Another 5 or 6 climbers were below us. So the chamois went into freak out mode and started heading for Austria. That gave him more to complain about. Eventually we descended back to his Mitsubishi Montero and drove up the drainage to another big park for another look. We were there 10 minutes and he deemed it to be a lunch time because of the climbers. So down the mountain we went. Stopping in a large park again and finding 3 more chamois in a scree field on the Slovenian side of the drainage several hundred feet and 800 yards form us. Then he decided they were not worth chasing and we went back to town.
On the drive back to town he decided it wasn't a hunting day that there were too many climbers. So I made the best of it and went to Ferlach, Austria 44 KM away to take al look at this very influential gun making town. Everything was closed on Sunday in Ferlach, but I took photos of the famous gunshops. Names like Schierring, Just, Glock (yes that Glock) and Peter Hofer. Was a pretty disapointng place. If you built an Austrian gun village and then turned it into an Indian reservation. Maybe all factory towns suck. I don't know I have not been to many factory towns.
I stewed in my own juices for the remainder of Sunday and after driving to Ferlach and then trying to see Lake Bled through the fog I was pissed off enough hat I decided I wan't hunting with the Count in the morning. I called me my booking agent and told him I wasn't hunting in the morning and I was driving home. I would have went home on Sunday, but I had to meet with my taxidermist in Austria on the way home to pick up the black grouse I shot in May, and I didn't think he would appreciate me showing up at his house at 8pm on Sunday night.
My drive home was great, after I picked up my bird from my taxidermist I went to Fine Ballistic Tools new factory and spent an hour there. They are kind of the Gunwerks of Europe.
