Milla, an update.

Milla is now 5 months old and doing great. She grows like bamboo and plays as if there's no tomorrow. She's a great guard dog too!
I've slowly started training her for finding scents and the basic dog stuff. After some simple/basic tests of her hound instincts I decided to take things a little further. About 3 day's ago I dragged a deer leg through the snow for about 120 meters. This was in unknown territory and a non-familiar deer leg. She found it faster than it took me to make to drag the leg through the bushes.

Keep up the good work Milla!

My first Fallow Deer

One of the species I've wanted to hunt for a long time now is Fallow Deer. We don't get them here because they don't seem to like mountains/steep slopes much. But a 30 minute drive puts me in Fallow Deer territory. I guess we're just unlucky they don't come here.

I can always go somewhere and pay to shoot anything I want but that's very expensive and not the way hunters do things over here. We wait, or lobby... :-), for an invitation or we trade. This time I got me an invitation from Feri in Kisszálas. And so did Zoltán. Next day we left for Kisszálas.

Zoltán was going with Feri to a feeding area for a seated hunt. I was on foot in a 4000 Ha forest with a guide for the next 2,5 hours.
I've seen lots of Red Deer in my area but the amount of Fallow Deer they have running around over there is mind boggling! Now I understand why the invitation wasn't a problem... I Saw at least 150 Fallow Deer in 2 hours and 2 huge males with a trophy weight of at least 4,5 kg, WOW!

Because I was only aloud to shoot calves it took quite some time before I finally got a decent shot. The deer were either grouped, on the horizon or running like hell so a safe and sure shot wasn't possible until just before dark when I nailed one standing alone.



This being my first Fallow Deer I got my ass whipped by Zoltán and Feri. No pictures of that...
Zoltán also shot one about the same size as mine but male.

It was yet another great and successful hunting session for both of us.

Thanks Feri!

Milla, my Hannover Hound

This is my puppy Milla (pronounced as "Mia"). She is a Hanover Hound or Scent hound. She was born on the 26^th of September 2009 here in Hungary.
I didn't get her because I'm a bad shot but you never know... :-)

She is truly a darling. Friendly, playful, intelligent and very hungry! Her parents and grandparents are well known hounds within the hunting community. They are in almost every book written in the last 20 years.



Here she is trying to swallow a deer leg. I give her at least one deer and one wild boar leg per week, she loves it!
I haven't started training her yet because I believe a puppy should be aloud to be a puppy. I'll probably start when she's about 6 or 7 months old. However, last week I couldn't help myself and tried her out. I took a wild boar paw (bottom half of the leg) and dragged it through the snow for about 10 meters and then burried it under approx. 30 cm of snow without Milla seeing anything. I then pointed the starting point out to her and of she went. She found it and ran away with it within about 10 seconds. This is without any training what so ever, pure instinct! Great stuff!
It's amazing to see these dogs work.

Driven hunt near Villány

On the 13th of december 2009 I was invited to a driven hunt near the famous Hungarian wine district of Villány. The area we were hunting in looked promising and we after some basic instructions we set of to our allocated spot (by draw).
After the drive started we were confronted by 5 fallow deer stags They were no more than 20 meters away. The largest of the group was at least 3 kilo trophy weight. That's a very nice specimen! Unfortunately for me this hunt was purely for wild boar. Plus I haven't saved up enough money to shoot a fallow deer stag of the calibre...
The morning session was not very productive for me. The only wild boar I saw was a nice one but to fast for a decent shot. In the afternoon we moved to a different area and waited for something to happen. We saw many red deer and roe deer running past us, but yet again, this was a wild boar hunt. At about 14.30 hours my luck changed and out of nowhere a wild boar came charging towards me and it had no idea of what was to come. From about 40 meters I shot it in it's back and it dropped.
Often one will shoot more during a driven hunt but to me one is enough to go home with a smile on my face.

A great day!

corn, corn, corn and more corn!

I maintain 2 feeding area's in the forest not far from my home. I check them every day and add corn if necessary. If all the corn has been eaten (it usually has) I put about 10 kg of fresh corn down.
This is a lot of corn on a yearly basis (do the math...). The pile of corn you see on the picture is about 3 metric tons. this should last anywhere between 3 and 4 months.
About six months ago I maintained 9 feeding areas every day. I don't even want to remember how much corn that was!