Haven't been here on the forums for a while: nightmare house renovation took waaaay longer than planned but when it was (almost!) finished we took a break and visited the wife's niece's farm in SE Queensland.

Hoping for some cold weather was futile, it was hot as hell in late March and no stags were roaring, however the tail end of Cyclone Trevor reached down through central Qld and gave a few days of rain during which 2 mornings were cool enough to wake the stags' libido.

On the first morning I was roared at by an unseen stag in a lantana gully, so I returned a half-arsed roar with a few grunts and he immediately roared back, then began moving up the gully. Unsure whether he was coming around to challenge me, or just heading over the saddle to clear off, I hurried to the crest of the ridge and positioned myself for a possible ~60m shot through a gap in the spotted gums overlooking his most likely egress.

No sooner was I in position than a hind flitted across the gap, then another. Deciding that any stag pushing hinds was going to be worthy of a bullet, I closed the bolt and fired without hesitation when he appeared. By the time I climbed down to the saddle he was quite dead, having gone only a few steps after receiving the bullet.

While only a 4x4 (and only just! ...on account of stunted bez tines) he was a big animal and the only stag I saw with hinds in 2 weeks of hunting on-and-off.

After the rain it warmed up again and they went off the boil completely in the Cressbrook Valley, but I managed to look over four more stags, all without hinds. In the last hour of the last day I finally found the stag I should have been hunting the whole time, long story, but he will have to wait till next year. ...unless someone else gets him first!