BELARUS-DEER CALLING Belarus holds the European championship in deer calling

Record ID: 149825

  • Title: BELARUS-DEER CALLING Belarus holds the European championship in deer calling
  • Date: 2nd June 2015
  • Summary: ***WARNING CONTAINS FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY*** VARIOUS OF CONTEST PARTICIPANTS HOLDING AWARDS STANDING ON STAGE, BEING PHOTOGRAPHED
  • Embargoed: 17th June 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Belarus
  • Country: Belarus
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA6N1J4SSH5ZT4SM933ITXDKFIF
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Hunters from nine European countries gathered in Belarus for the 17th European deer calling championship. The contest was taking place at "Belovezhskaya Pushcha" national park southwest of the capital Minsk.
    Twenty-seven participants of the championship from Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia, Chezh Republic, Germany and France competed in imitating sounds a deer makes in various situations: before or after mating, after winning a fight with a rival stag, or when getting ready for action.
    The championship organiser Yuri Shumsky considers the stag calling not just a hunter's skill but a real art.
    "At first you study behavioural habits of a bird or an animal and imitate sounds they make in order to bring them closer, to photograph or to capture this animal. This ability to spot, to imitate, to outsmart an animal - this is real art in our opinion and in the opinion of the people gathered here," Shumsky said.
    The contest participants used various tools from a sea shell to metal or plastic pipes to simulate the roar of a stag during mating season.
    A practice to imitate stag grunts goes back centuries, says the championship's judge from Slovakia Alois Kashshak.
    "Deer-calling is a very old skill, because our grandfathers didn't have good guns and they had to lure a deer, a hare or a fox closer - "Come here, I will kill you". Now we also don't have time to waste, we go to the woods and try it out there (imitating rain deer sound): "Oh, there is a deer there, I'll follow it and try to hunt it down," Kashshak said.
    The judging panel was traditionally seated away from the stage and behind a screen so they could not see the competitors and were able to fully concentrate on the sounds they made.
    The centuries-old skills are still used by modern farmers when they want to calm down an anxious stag or by hunters trying to attract a deer.
    "Is is not a sport, deer calling is a decease, because every deer caller on the 9th month of every year goes to the woods to live there. He wants to lure in his trophy and nothing else interests him - neither wild boar, nor roe, only deer," said the championship participant from Lithuania Audias Pankyavicius.
    Deer callers from Poland got the first and the second prizes, the third one went to a Czech contestant.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: Audio restrictions: This clip's Audio includes copyrighted material. User is responsible for obtaining additional clearances before publishing the audio contained in this clip.
Register