The Mysterious Ticking Muntjac

While were making a list:

Few months back SSD and I made the trip to horse country to stalk with  Mr 7mm 

left me in a highseat and took South Side D stalking on another farm

It had been a while, at the far end of the field there was no clear backstop so I’d let some fallow walk on by and the light was starting to turn. When a most remarkable thing happened. 

You know that sense that some kind of prey is pressnt, unseen but definitely present. Glassing the hegdes to left and right. Then starts an odd decidedly metallic ‘ticking’ coming from the hedgerow beneath me. To start with I thought it was SSD and Mr 7mm playing a joke on me, but they were nowhere to be seen, the sound was qiet enough that it would have had to be next to the high-seat  i was starting to feel i was playing chicken with some unseen advisory  

The ticking stopped so I stopped looking for its source and just had time to move the zoom ring to 4x  when a muntjac doe exploded out of the hedge and made a dash into the field  At less that 50m I gave her an “Erhum”:she paused, turning first her head back whence she’d come, seeing nothing she turned a little further and caught a 140gr SST had destroyed her front leg and raked her ribcage. SSTs seem to transfer so much energy into the animal, it had flipped her through the air, she came down like a sack of wet cement  

I like to pause for a bit before collecting the carcass but cloud was blowing in so it was getting draker quicker than id like so i retrieved her and waited for the chaps. 

Had covid so didn’t get out on the pigeons, more next time

Your pal

SBW