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My first proper Stag....how it all unfolded
This trip had been in the planning for some months and originally it was meant to be in the peak of the roar....unfortunately we missed out on getting a booking on the block we hunt so we made a plan to go in early in hope of a fat pre roar hard antler stag.
I was pretty gutted as I hunted the tail end of the roar last year and even though we got a few meat animals, just being there hearing the stags roar was pretty special.
We headed into our block Friday afternoon and walked in to a slip we have had good success on. It's a reasonable walk in side hilling, a little climbing and Bush bashing.
We hit our spot about 6pm and set about glassing. It wasn't till considerably later around 730pm when we finally started to see a few deer first a hind, fawn and yearling at around 460yards and then a spiker at about 600 yards. It was getting close to dark at that stage and we decided it was a long shot and a reasonably difficult recovery on the first evening of our 4 day trip, we still had to get to our camp site and set up camp so the spiker got a reprieve.
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We hiked out happy we had seen a few animals already.
As it was we didn't get camp set up till well after midnight, an alarm was set for 6am as our morning hunt/glassing spot was only 200m from camp.....
Disaster....well kinda I woke up at 5am felling dreary and figured I would lay there for 5 minutes then get up for a coffee before waking thd others.
Roll on blinking then finding out it was 730am :pissed off:
I scrambled out of bed woke everyone up and made a quick coffee already convinced we'd screwed up this mornings hunt.
It was with heavy boots and not much hope we trudged up the track towards our glassing spot, I looked over as we came into view (not being particularly stealthy I might add) peering into the early morning semi light face saw a deer shaped object but quickly discounted it as being the wrong colour.
I sat down and started glassing eventually coming back to the deer shaped object I saw 5 minutes earlier......holy shit it was a stag he was feeding in and out of the scrub line working his way across the face.
At 430 yards it was hard to tell if he was any good but it did look like he had a bit of width. I worked out my drop and dialed up the Nikon, just then he disappeared into the scrub again.....damn it !!!! Meanwhile my mate who had just bought his first rifle spotted a spiker about 50 yards from where we last saw the stag.
He was keen to have a crack but we agreed that we would wait and see if the stag made another appearance.
Minutes went by then half an hour then 45 minutes, it seemed like an eternity. The spiker was still feeding but had moved towards the scrub it was getting to crunch time we had a decision to make definite meat or possible stag.....I was just about to tell my mate to take the spiker when he excitedly whispered "there he is there's your stag!"
I ranged him again 409 yards I dialed the correction from the earlier range and put the cross hairs on him....bugger he was facing us head on and down hill no shot.
He was only a few strides from the scrub edge and I knew he could slip away at any moment my heart was racing he took a couple steps left and was now quartering towards us but I could see he was looking back over his shoulder towards the scrub....I called a warning I was about to fire so my mate could spot the shot....I took a breath in exhaled then held part way out....the cross hairs jumped up and down with my heart beat, I might add it's bloody hard to hold the scope steady at 24x at the best of times let alone when your lined up on your first stag.
Finally I was able to hold the cross hairs steady.
Boomfa !!!!!!! Theres no mistake of the report from the Sako 270 WSM I heard the hit but didn't see it because of the recoil.
I was a little worried as I felt a gust of wind literally as I squeezed the trigger it was enough to have me doubt my shot...but thankfully my mate reported he was down but I had hit him a little far back and his front legs were flailing, I had already chambered a back up round and I.lined up on him again boomfa !!!! My mate exclaims you missed ! I retorted I don't think so mate, but he insisted I had so I chambered another round and let rip again boomfa!!!! There was no mistaking the hit this time and the stag lay motionless.
I was elated it was a long shot in average light and there 409 yards away was my stag we planned the recovery and made our way along the ridge to the opposite side of the valley for what would be a shortish but steep recovery, I told my mate when we get there I bet there are 3 holes in my stag and he remained adamant there wouldn't.
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