After success with a nice 4x4 stag during last year's roar in the Brisbane valley, nothing was going to keep me from having a crack at the reds again this year.

Unfortunately, other commitments meant we had to either go early or go late. Hoping for an early cold snap, the former option was chosen and we drove from Darwin to south-east Queensland in time to spend the Easter weekend camped on the banks of Cressbrook Creek with the wife's niece and her family. Their small farm straddles the creek on a wide bend and is backed by some serious yamas interspersed with steep lantana-choked gullies. Perfect!

Unfortunately the hoped-for cold weather did not arrive and the roaring was very sporadic, sometimes at midnight for an hour or so, sometimes at first light but none at all during the day or in the evening. Certainly nothing to tempt me into starting a poly-pipe conversation of my own!

So each day I mounted "shank's pony" and headed off over the hills. After five days of solid hunting and only a single chance at a young 4x4 with hinds on offer, I finally bumped into a nice stag walking slowly up out of a hidden wallow in a steep gully. I was about to take the shot, but something caused me to hesitate and he was immediately followed by a much larger dark stag with baldy shoulders, a mud-caked mane and beautiful heavy main-beams. Looking back over his shoulder at around 15 metres I think he had only just realised I was there when the trigger broke!

Only a 4x5 and an old stag but not yet 'going back': I took the back-straps, rumps and thigh-meat, still very plump with plenty of fat around the back and hind-quarters. Together with the head, I carried that lot back over the divide and down to camp, in cotton pillow-cases slung around my shoulders with telecom rope. Damn near killed me!

Can't wait to do it all again next year!