Dear All

I have finally had the plasure to find an old stag in the large Polish forests, Weight 182 kilo, Age 9/10 years, The head weighs 7.5 kilo. It is a 12'pointer with no crown on one side so I could shoot him as a "Select". The meaning of this is tha we leave the stags with the proper shape for breeding and only shoot the lesser stags until the stag has at least 11 years.

Now the "hundred thousad $ " question is How do you see if the stag is 11 years old ? The ansver is that you must spend hundreds of hours in the forest observing and getting to know the individual animals. If you fail to judge the age right, and shoot a stag which does not have the right age, you will not get any license for the following two years....

The stag was shot North east of Warszaw, Poland, I have hunted these forests for 20 years now and I have spent many months in the forest. We have almost 16.000 Hectares of Hunting ground and plan to shoot 70 deer this year. We dont shot many old stags so this is by far my best stag ever.

I hunt alone as allways and used my Gebr. Merkel 203, combination gun in cal. 7x65R. it is a beautifull old gun with detachable side locks. The Merkel was Built in 1969 with a seperate set of shotgun barrels.

To answer a comment, The Merkel is cal. 16/70,7x65R I use normally a 9 grams Sellier&bellot "teilmantel" something but I have moved into some 10 grams bullets this year. I am not quite sure what the brand are but probably loaded by Blaser.

The stag was shot during the rut, I was in the forrest from 3 in the morning and had listened to this one and two more for 4 hours trying to figure out how to get to see one of them. This one I had seen the previous evening at just 40 meters but i was not sure if it was an even or uneven 12 pointer then.

In the morning her was still going on when the others went quiet, and I desided to walk up to him in the old pine forrest where he was not moving a lot, it took me maybe half an hour to get to within 50 meters of him and kneeling against a hundred year old pine with the "stecker" set he walked towards me and i took the shot.
he made absolutely no reaction and just disappeared in a steady pace. The morning was completely still and I expected to hear him fall in the young dense pines just 50 meters away. No sound was to be heard, so i walked up to the place where he was standing, but could not find any blood, hair, or anything that would indicate what happend.

I think this must be stag number 26, so not the first, but it took many minutes to calm down and get myself together and make a reconstruction. I simply could not understand it so I slowly traced him thru the pines maybe 150 metrs to a sandy forest track where i could clearly se the fresh tracks.
Standing there i looked further into the forest, and there he was. I never found any hair blood or anything that would indicate a hit.
The bullet had broken the left leg and made a hole in the top of the heart.

The next step would have been to let my black Labrador Akon look for him and he would have found him.

The shot was by no means difficult, but walking up to the stag in dry dense old forest, with no wind to hide the smallest mistake represents to me the ultimate hunting experiense.

Perhaps it was a mistake not to wait the extra few seconds and wait till he was standing still. and then put the bullet in just behind the leg.

more pictures at http://jagt.granhaven.dk/#6.1

Darz bor, Peter Frost Hørlyck