Thread: Epic Night - PB Red Stag

Well last night will be one to remember for me. Having arranged a hunt after work with my mate Ben we hit the hills late in the afternoon after work. It was dry as a bone and hot as hell and we could only imagine the sweat that would be shed climbing back up the hill as we descended into our chosen location for the evening stake out. The wind was in all the wrong direction so we had to improvise a little and ended up sitting in a position we hadn't originally planned on.

Watching over some thick steep scrub country, we had about two hours of light remaining when we arrived in the heat. As expected we spotted a couple of deer down in some shaded areas but not much activity overall. When the light finally dipped behind the hill with about an hour of light remaining, the golden hour began and the deer started moving. At this point we had heard the odd crack and knock coming from below in the scrub and assumed it must be a deer. With 50min of light left we had seen a few animals but nothing worth pursuing so I stood up to peek down the scrub line directly below us. Bugger me a stag had just come out. Scrambling to tell Ben to get down, we grabbed our rifles and prepared for a shot. The stag was 100m below and began making his way up the scrub line towards us moving in and out of view. When he got to around 30m he finally re appeared and I stopped him with a quick mew. The 260 released a 142 LRAB tearing through his shoulder anchoring him on the spot.

To say we were excited and in awe would be an understatement. We couldn't believe our eyes when we found a beautiful big even 14 pointer lying at our feet! My previous personal best stag was a large 11 pointer I shot in Fiordland when I was 15 with my Dad and 11 years later I had finally tipped over one even better!

He was one extremely fat stag with up to an inch of fat in places! It was a big effort doing my first caping job and getting all the meat off followed by a mighty climb with a very heavy load back up the hill! It was fair to say that I had a grin on my face the whole way up no matter how heavy the load was! I will be off to the taxidermist tomorrow to drop him off and hopefully get my first ever mount done.