I’d had no success over the roar despite once again coming close to a stag in a steep bit of thick bush country that I’ve been after for three years now, and passing up on several other stags that needed more years to mature.
So, a month after the roar, my daughter, her partner and I headed away early one morning for an area I thought may hold deer feeding up large before winter.
I was left to go my own way up a gully I had been up before. After a bit of a climb up through the bush, I broke out to the scree and tussock area abovevery open country with nothing but the folds of the land and the odd bit of low scrub to hide me, I decided to sit and have a glass around and some lunch. I then spotted a reasonably good stag feeding up in a wee patch of scrub with a couple of hinds bedded near him. Then another set of antlers behind a bush - both stags good enough, but the one I could see looked young. While I watched, the second stag stood up and fed away up the valley with two hinds. He, too, looked to be young and not as well-developed as the closer stag. I carried on glassing hoping something more mature might show up. After about half an hour another set of antlers appeared in some scrub and eventually the owner. This stag looked bigger all round but was hard to assess as he was a wee way up the valley feeding, but only for a short time before he sat down again. I could just see him and thought I could make out 14-15 points. Patience was called for, so while I finished lunch, I assessed my stalking options, remembering I had little to no cover and was also in full view of the first stag, a hind and a fawn. I’m not confident with long shots, so was thinking I might have to pass on this opportunity or risk it and try to close the gap and hope he would move in my direction.
