A sambar stag that i took one Saturday afternoon while hunting over hounds is indelibly stamped on my mind.
Four of us hunters had taken the hounds on leads up a steep spur to where we had found a stags marks in the wet ground,it had rained during the night and was steadily drizzling while we climbed back up to the marks.The hounds had a little trouble with the rain washed slots but were soon on the job and voicing steadily until we lost them totally.I stayed back in the saddle where i thought the stag may double back to evade his pursuers but after a miserable wait of four hours i broke radio silence and spoke to George the team leader.
On telling him i had heard no hounds since slipping them and that i was coming out of the bush as i was wringing wet,cold and hungry he asked me to stay a little longer.
Well i said to myself that i should climb higher to maybe hear where the hounds were,so off up the spur i headed which became steeper and steeper with me at one stage shouldering my 7mm mag and climbing with two hands until i was really buggered and pulled up amongst some jagged rocks on the spur.
After a brief rest and no hound voicing to be heard i started to continue up the spur in the steady drizzle all the time wondering what the bloody hell i was doing up so high--at the same time telling myself that you shoot big stags up high so keep going.I then could hear a steady faint noise behind me which after being so tired from the climb and not bothering to turn around i told myself was the drizzling rain forming on a long gum leaf and dripping off and falling into a piece of rolled up bark with water in it,dit dit dit dit and being fairly jaded i took some time to realise that the noise was moving so i slowly turned around while silently shouldering my rifle in the one movement,i was about ten-twelve metres above the rock bar i had climbed through and with the spur being very steep the rock bar was very jagged and looked like the spine of a stegosaurus and bugger me crossing the spur just below the rock bar was a thumping big bodied sambar stag with his head laid right back with his nose up showing what looked like a mass of too many white points which stood out in the dull gloom.It is amazing what you can see when you are switched on and by this time my whole body was buzzing,i could even see the white and his huge brown eye in the rear corner of his eye socket watching me for a reaction.This stag was right on the point of leaving in a stretched elastic bound and i had to steady myself mentally in only the few milliseconds left to take a shot,

but i could only see the top 12 inches of his shoulder momentarily between the rocks as he crossed the spur and getting a bead on him through the rock gaps was quite difficult and he only had a few metres to the edge and certain freedom when after all this time i was talking and calming myself to not hit a rock i squeezed off with the immediate reaction of the stag launching himself four feet straight up and then gone .....straight over the edge and into a deep gully.
I turned my radio on and imformed George that it was me that had fired the shot and it was a big stag and if not dead he was heading down to the river.All this time i still hadnt heard a hound as the stag was well in front of them.
I had an imaginary smoke and then started on his marks going down the very steep mountain side marvelling at his great weight and how his huge feet had cut into the soft ground when i came apon long streaks of snotty lung blood which cheered me no end and then followed up some more and found him dead against a tree about 140 metres from the shot.Breathing a huge sigh of relief on turning his head over and seeing that all six tines were intact i calmed down...a little only as believe me the whole episode was exciting and the thought was in my mind that he may make it to the river and one of the other boys might nail him.
Being down inside the thickly bushed gully and not having radio contact i started the climb back to the spur when i saw a hind sneaking through the bush and not having too many in our tally that year i took her as well for another one shot kill. The hounds finally came through and i tied them up and waited for the crew to find me,they had no idea i was so bloody high and kept radioing to find me,eventually they got up to me with the help of a few cooee`s and we took our pic`s and cut the two deer up and had a very tough carry out from the cloudy top of Mount T.

I had taken other sambar stags before this hunt but this stag meant a lot to me with his sneaking behind me and over the top of my fresh scent filled bootmarks knowing that i was right there and he had to get past me. Having this big stag up so close and on the tips of his toes ready to explode into escape mode was an extremely invigorating experience.
We had found the stags marks at about daybreak and started the hounds on them at around 8am and i shot him about 2 pm and we all finally got off the side of the mount after 4pm a very wet cold tired and happy bunch of hound hunters.
Make no bones about it if you think that taking sambar stags over hounds is an easy way to get them,well its not,to the dedicated dogman doing it legally it can be a very tough way of obtaining a trophy deer and for my years stalking and dogging i have taken more stags by the stalk method which i do only now but i still have a soft spot for a pack of hounds up high in the Vic Alpine country voicing on a sambar stag.I do have some pic`s of course but with Hunting-pictures .com going bust i can only ask Nitro to post one for me,note the scars on his shoulder where he had done batttle with another big fella.

(Photos added for Gryphon by NitroX)