[Music]
What does hunting or shooting mean to you? For Tim Pilbeam it's a rucksack, a rifle and
a chance to breathe in a new experience.
We're exploring the beautiful Croatian coastline and countryside looking for a trophy mouflon,
an animal that clings to on the unforgiving rocks of the Dalmatian riviera, and we are
after roe and boar in a vast hunting area filled with flower meadows and forests.
We have moved inland to about an hour and a half from where we were on the coast. Very
very different terrain. Just look at it, this is woodland, rolling mountains here. None
of the hard rock we had down on the coast. It's a very different type of stalking. We're
on roe this morning. We're probably a fraction late at the moment so we need to get in there
pretty quickly. So it's a very different skill-set here so we are very much relying on our guides
to take us round hopefully to find a nice roe, so we need to get going.
The trip has been arranged through Artemis Hunting and our young guide is Pavle. He and
his father Mario know every inch of this strange landscape. Sometimes it looks like home, other
times the Serengeti.
During the winter they feed the boar using this lofty maize dispensing unit. Dinner is
served at the same time every evening.
So they put corn in there?
Yes.
And it turns round?
Yes.
And it feeds the boar once a day at 6 o'clock. And you have these all around the estate.
How many do you have?
At every high seat we have one.
OK. So you have got a high seat over there?
look. The deer and boar are naturally timid. They have more than a man with a Sauer 101
in .308 to worry about here. It's gone, but we still have a few hours before storms are
forecast to arrive.
20 minutes later having worked through a broadleaf woodland Pavle gets Tim on the sticks. A young
buck is grazing out from
the cover.
[Rifle shot]
Well done.
There you go.
This is like stalking in England.
[Music]
Absolutely stunning place, the tall grass, it's so nice to see all these flowers - the
variety of flowers. And to see the roe deer just moving in between the trees. It is beautiful.
The heads are not any great size here because of the local mineral levels.This one is a
good animal to take.
I had a wonderful stalk this morning. We were a bit late coming in but we had this sense
that Pavle just knew that something was going on because, as we came across through the
open land here, we saw one roe and that just jinxed away, I don't know why, but he just
was just very quite, very personal about what he was doing. A beautiful bit of stalking
down next to the woods. We came through there, and came out into this open area here, you
can see a beautiful wildflower meadow. And there was this young buck just marking his
territory. It took very gentle stalking, just very careful movements, he just knew exactly
what he was doing, just pfffff up there. Go. It was just very, not unusual, but a very
nice way of stalking, very gentle. And it has a very lovely feeling about the whole
of Croatia in some ways. It's a very beatiful country and this is just another form of roe
stalking and in a diffferent country. It's not all about the UK. It's a beautiful place
to be.
Like in many European countries, the animal is honoured and Tim finds out a little more
about the local wildlife.
You were saying that in Croatia the deer have predators.
Yes.
And they are very timid and very hard to stalk.
They are really shy because we get a lot of predators. We get the wolf, we get the bear,
we get the lynx. We got all the predators that we can have. And the roe is really shy
for that reason.
So the wolves, do they hunt as a pack?
Yes. One was, like driven, and another....
And have you seen that?
Yes.
Wow.
So lynx, wolf and bear to contend with, that would keep you on your toes. Tim's next challenge
is to use his Harkila rucksack to carry out the young roe.
Now I have not done this before. Just trying one of the Harkila rucksacks out which carries
a roe deer. I think normally one would gut it first and then put it in here but I want
to take it back to the car and then deal with it then.
Oh, hello. My friend.
[Laughs]
I don't want to disrespect the animal too much but...
This is not a typically British thing to do, but there's a first time for everything. If
you're on your own it's a very efficient way of extracting an animal of this size.
This trip is as much about the experience as the hunting. We are asked to get a fire
going to cook lunch.
For this trip Tim has a Sauer 101 with a Zeiss V8 scope on top. It means he's comfortable
shooting 300 metres across a valley or 100 metres in a meadow, but with glass like this
you need to establish a work flow.
Very versatile optics we got here I've got a 150-metre zero, and the reason I've gone
for that is that I am shooting mouflon from probably 100 metres to 350 metres, so a huge
range there. Most of the roe here are probably 60 to 70 metres and a boar here would be about
between 30 and 70 metres, so I've got quite a wide range of uses for this. But be very
careful. The more things you can adjust the more things can go wrong. You must have a
discipline. Every time you finish using a rifle, wind it back to zero. Otherwise it
will catch you out. It is done. Same with your windage. And also I do the same thing
with my parallax. I try and keep my parallax at around 150 all the time. If I'm shooting
beyond 200 metres I will probably tweak it a little bit. But please, please when your
using these target turrets, make sure you always wind them back.
Back to lunch and we're expecting some fresh roe liver but, instead, Mario returns with
some home dry cured pork belly. Some is eaten raw, some sliced and cooked over the fire.
For Tim this is what it's all about.
It is such a tasty bit of meat. Beautiful.
For more information about hunting in Croatia please visit Artemis-Hunting.com
[Music]