August 10th is opening day for roebuck in Norway. It is one of my favorite hunts as I often prefer to hunt alone. This is also a small game, and thus, it can easily by handled by one person in terms of bringing the animal back home.

I was super excited since this day was long awaited. Fox hunting starts July 15th, however, roebuck hunting is always worth the wait. Nature is in full bloom, temperature is nice, and the Norwegian summer means that there is often visible shooting light long into the night. I arrived at the hunting ground on August 9th to have some time to scout the area and spot animals. This time, however, the pop-up tent came in handy on this occasion as the weather was poor. The Hans weather system brought flooding and havoc to the eastern parts of Norway, and even here in the west it was unusually rainy for this time of year.

At 23:30 I was loaded and ready. At 00:15 I spotted a single female roe. At 00:45 I enjoyed the view of two deer calmly grazing 129 meters away. Apart from that, the night passed by without any action. I was about to call it a night at 02:30, but at this time night is about to turn into day again, so I decided do an all-nighter. Still in my pop-up tent, at 06:00 I was desparate and frustrated, and I stepped outside to have another look around the area. Nothing to see and I went back towards the car. Then, suddenly, just across a line of trees I spotted a roe buck grazing. I measured range to be 135 meters, and using some larger rocks as shooting support, I sent a 123gr Sako Powerhead Blade caliber 6.5x55SE bullet from my Blaser R8 Ultimate. It showed clear signs of a good hit, did a quick sprint and fell dead to the ground. This was an old and clever buck that had been waiting me out during my calling the night before and this early morning, before finally checking out who I was.