Fabian Menzel from Bavaria is Germany’s best deer caller. The 42-year-old voice imitator again won the championship title at Europe’s largest hunting fair in Dortmund on Friday.
“It was tight,” said the forester from Lower Franconia, who had already won the competition in 2020. He has now prevailed against eleven competitors from North Rhine-Westphalia, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Lower Saxony.
At the 40th international public exhibition “Jagd
Only one woman was among the participants – Hildegard Zervous from Oberzieh in North Rhine-Westphalia came in ninth.
Menzel, Soltwedel and Wolzenburg now get the chance to compete in the forthcoming European Championships in deer calling.
For Menzel, “calling deer is a big hobby”. The winner from Nüdlingen near Bad Kissingen told the German Press Agency that he took part for fun and dollery. For the fourth time he was at “Jagd
It is not a “joke event”, but a demanding craft with a long tradition, it was said at the championship of deer calling, which again proved to be a crowd puller with several hundred spectators at the fair.
The competitors have to compete against each other in three disciplines. First, the voice of a young, searching deer must be imitated. Then the sound of the top stag in the herd of red deer and then the sound of the call duel between two equally strong stags at the height of the rut. In the case of a sting, as also happened at this year’s competition, the call of a victorious stag after the fight has to be imitated, writes the hunting magazine “Wild und Hund”.
In a report by Bayerischer Rundfunk from 2020, Fabian Menzel can be seen and heard at work:
Deer calls, imitated by humans, are used for hunting. The aim is to pretend to be a rival during the red deer’s rutting season so that the actual top dog comes out of cover. In this way, the hunter can better judge whether he can kill the animal or not.
