Hunting my first buck

All right, welcome back to another video, folks.

It's five o' clock in the morning. I'm at my friend Joe's house near Stockholm.

We're going to our friend Martin's farm.

It's the first time I'm going to.

Hunt, looking for fallow deer and talking about farming. So we'll bring you along, see how the day goes. So viewer discretion is advised. This is a video about shooting a deer. And I want to just say, like, my channel, I've been saying for the last year, is transitioning towards homesteading, hunting, fishing, being with my kids, people I love, etc. As I put the farm down from commercial production, I've always just shared openly what's going on for me. I brought you into chicken slaughtering sessions and whatever we've been up to. Hunting is a sensitive issue. I know some people feel quite touchy about it. I'm hunting only for food. One of the cows. We're gonna go and just check the cows, aren't we? Because they need checking. They've got food and water in this freezing temperature. It's got really cold now. But, yeah, I want to just say, like, if you're not into that, don't follow my channel. I'm not here to get into contrived ethical arguments. I'm hunting for food. You could very easily make the case that hunting is far more ethical than farming ever could be. Even good regenerative agriculture. But I don't want to hear about that. If you're not interested in these things, don't follow my channels. But, yeah, if you make comments that are inappropriate and I will just ban you from my social media because I.

Just don't have patience for it.

Peace. So it's a pretty big deal for me. I've never shot an animal other than farmyard animals, and that feels different. Feels different to go out with a rifle and, you know, search for fallow deer. We don't have them over in Vermont. We have roe deer. Jacob, who we're meeting, is training hunting dogs and he's an experienced hunter. Joe, I did my hunting test with, and so we're just getting taken out for experience. And Joe shot a deer the other day. I haven't got around to hunting yet. I missed last winter writing a book. So it's a big deal for me. And I'm interested and curious how the experience will be for me.

Okay, it's day two. I'm out on my own. I'm just down below Martin's farm up on the hill here, where I Stayed last night and had an amazing day yesterday. Took me out, Blasho and Jacob and they took me and Joe out. Didn't see any deer yesterday really. But I have come down on my own early in the morning and I've just taken my first kill. Beautiful fallow deer.

So with roe deer hunting in Sweden, you can start one hour before sunrise until one hour after sundown. Sunrise was about 7:10, so I got there about 45 minutes early and crept up to that stand really quietly. Obviously with the frosty ground, it's really crunchy. And of course deer have excellent hearing. So I checked the wind direction and I crept up very slowly and sat with good time to make sure if there are any animals in front of me in the field that hopefully they wouldn't be disturbed and certainly wouldn't be able to smell me. And I've been intensely watching the forest strip in front of me, getting my eyes used to the sort of dawn and just enough light to sort of start making out shapes in the field. But actually I turned and looked right round behind me and that's when I saw the animal I shot. And a few seconds later there were three other males right behind it. And I was trying to gauge the distance and it was hard for me because it was low light and I was on a kind of downward slope. And I looked back at the forest, which I knew how far away it was. We'd been using a range finder the day before and guesstimating and we were actually within half a meter every time. We guessed a distance up to about 120 meters, which is pretty cool. And get a bit of that from farming and laying out fences, etc. But it was interesting because I thought they were about 150 meters away. And whilst the rifle is capable of hitting at that distance, I didn't feel so totally confident. And I know like when I'm slaughtering animals with a bolt gun on the farm, I'm very relaxed, I'm very focused on breathing and never rushing to try and take the animal. I'm waiting till it presents itself. Everything is peaceful and it's a very rapid response at that moment. But it's very obvious when it's the right time and I feel really in sync. And that's what I was waiting for with hunting. So I had it in my sights and I noticed they're starting to walk down my way. And so I just really focused in on my breathing because I was noticing as I was looking down the scope I had some sort of shaking because it's a big deal, you know, you're preying on an animal that doesn't even know you're there with a super high powered rifle that can, you know, kill a big beast. So it's a big deal for me and I'm sure it's a big deal for anyone when they shoot their first animal. So I let them keep coming down towards me. Waited till the lead deer presented himself perfectly. I was watching the legs so carefully because you can see how they're turned towards or away from you. And it's so important you get this kill shot in a very tight zone. And so I waited till the perfect moment and it went perfectly. When we actually butchered the animal, it was the heart shot. That animal jumped up in the air once, twice, down, gone. Very peaceful, no stress hormones. This is the cleanest kill of any kind of animal you could ever have. And I feel really privileged by the experience. It was really special for me that it happened when I was on my own, actually, because I feel like it's given me confidence and composure to know that I can handle that situation and not get jittery and not rush, just take my time. Interestingly, the animals behind the three males behind freaked out. They all didn't know they're disorientated. They didn't know where the shot came from. And they actually all ran right towards me, stopped about 20 meters from the hide. I'm still out of view behind camera netting. Then they all turned sideways and presented themselves to me. And I'd already reloaded. I could have easily taken another one, but I didn't know what was going to happen to the meats. Traditionally, when you shoot on someone else's land, the animal goes to them. Martin and Annika have been incredibly generous as hosts, as friends, and they want me to keep the animal for my freezer because that was my first animal and that's a big deal. I'm super grateful for them and for Jacob and Blascha for showing me and Joe and introducing us to hunting. It's a big thing for me and a really different sensation to hunting, foraging, farming that I'm used to.

Well, that was interesting. Now I've processed a lot of farm animals and put with bolt guns, put down pigs, sheep, etc. It feels different when you're hunting a wild animal because I guess it's the rifle. You've got a lethal weapon that can take something that doesn't even know you're there. Very different to. It's interesting. Definitely breathing really helps to Calm your nerves. It's the first time I've shot an animal in the wild. I've been sitting up in this stand up on the hill, watching down over this tree line that's on Martin's farm. Beautiful male. Let's go have a. Wow, what a beautiful beast. It's really moving in a very different way to, you know, taking the sheep or something for eating. It's like something about the wildness, something about rifle. It's a totally new experience for me, me and yeah, I think it was a pretty clean shot and just hopped a couple of steps and fell down. You can see the blood splendor there. So I'm pretty happy with that, I guess. Got a gut in and they typically hang. So it would go to the landowner. That's Martin up in the house in Annika. They've been such amazing host to us here. Obviously it's a sensitive thing with shooting dead animals. And I've brought you along on all kinds of farming journeys and fishing and hunting is another way for me to.

Connect to the land.

It's been a really interesting experience for me to obviously be deeply involved in ecosystems and ecosystem processes. Working with the farm and fishing is something I've done since childhood and these ways to connect in with nature. And I think hunting is another one, foraging is another one. But hunting is different because you. It's primordial. You go into kind of stealth mode with heightened sense of awareness and you're just really on point. Your senses are sharper, you're hearing your eyes, you're focused in a way that maybe I've had it with fly fishing for trout or sea trout, but not in the same way as hunting and handling a firearm where you've got, you know, 100, 150 meters of range to take an animal that's just totally oblivious to your presence. It's a new thing. But I like it to be able to, you know, bring meat to the freezer in this way. It's something I've always said over the years at Ridgestale. It's like. It's crazy how much work we put into moving cattle on a daily basis, etc, and then watching these elk and deer run by and just thinking like, I'm shivering right now. It's really cold. You can see it's frosty on the ground. I've got a few layers on, but it's minus degrees. And I've been sitting out for an hour before sunrise. So it's about 10 by 7 we can start hunting here. And I got to the stand about an hour early, just sitting and. Yeah, but I'm freezing cold. I'm going to go up to the house and get some gear to pull it up there and gut it up, I think.

So. You always hang deer with the skin on and it's a case of time and temperature. We had about four or five degrees at the farm, so hanging it for a week there. Gotta go back to butcher that and bring it back for the freezer. And if we get to keep the skin, we'll be processing that. Grace is coming soon. She's very keen to make things out of the skin. Not sure if they'll want to keep it for Annika's cloth making business, but we'll see how that goes. But really nice experience for me and amazing to have wild meat. Some really interested to incorporate more wild meats into my diet and it's such a pleasurable experience. It's a really interesting new journey for me to explore. And I've always felt like, and I've said many times on YouTube, it's kind of crazy farming here. Sometimes we have salmon, sea trout, lobsters, elk or moose and all these different deer and wild boar running around. And we put so much effort into.

Moving animals around our landscape in the.

Middle of a landscape forest full of nutrient dense, wild, vigorous animals. So I'm really excited to explore this journey more. Well, that's an unusual sight. Now, I'm not much of a trophy hunter, but I did feel like I wanted to preserve this moment. This is a special moment to start a new journey. So I've taken the head back to the farm here at Ridgedale and I'm boiling this to basically soften all the meat and I'm going to probably pressure wash it to clean it. And then you can dip this in very strong hydrogen peroxide, which we happen to have a lot of for cleaning microgreen trays, etc. And that sort of bleaches the skull white and makes sure there's no nasties. And so I'm going to mount this one up. It's going to be a memento to a significant moment in my life. Well, that's it for the video folks and thank you very much for joining me for what's been a very special moment for me in my life and something I've been looking forward to for a long time now. And it's a good time. If you're interested in my books, Regenerative Agriculture or the Ridgedale Farm Builds Book, if you want them as gifts before Christmas, now's a good time to get into that. You can find information for that in the links below. See you in a video soon.