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At the urging of some members here below is the story of my first red stag I shot this roar, nothing huge but a start all the same.

Firstly I have to thank my dad for putting this all together. I have broken my duck thanks to him and learnt a little bit about Red Deer in QLD, a little more than nothing that is! It was a pretty wet trip for the first couple of days and we spent the first morning trying to hunt some thick country. I felt like I would have been better off with a 404 in the fog! It would have surely centrepunched some of the saplings in the thick stuff.

By the afternoon we were lower in the valley heading towards another property doing 110 minding our own business when a bloody stag decides to cross the road after doing a full 360 in the middle to ensure we have seen the headgear. Well luckily we were inside dad's mate's boundaries so with dad expertly slowing the vehicle yours truly grabed the rifle and made a mad dash after the fast departing stag. I jumped the fence and took an awkward short a departing stag. My first shot levelled him just in front of the pelvis into the spine and boiler room. I quickly ran up to deliver the coup de gras.

He is not a monster nor is he a symetrical hat rack but he was a very old stag who had just been beaten by a much better stag up the ridgeline.

Dad and I had probably our best hunt together the next morning sitting over a gully watching a young 3x3 with his harem of 12-15 does walk out of the bushline through the gully drink at the dam and come back the same way. There was a satellite spikey in the herd who would have been no more than 15m from us and did not know we were there! We sat watched and let them go knowing that he was very young, probably only his second head and had good potential. There was no point in taking him and it would have ruined an amazing experience with the old boy in the shed already.

We sidled on along the hillside and I spied a young spiker watching us from the bushes at about 25m we watched him calmly trot off without alarm. Later we heard two stags fighting in the lantana but it was over the boundary so we wat and waited watching the world go by straining to hear for a clatter of hooves or watching for movement in the bush. Glassing all the time in case he was watching us. Neither of the stags showed but down on the flats not 200m from the edge of Lake Wivenhoe a mature, big bodied stag with significant antler development pranced into an open paddock. At about 3km I could not make his rack out but he disappeared into some adjoining scrub not to be seen again.

We hunted late that afternoon and chased a stag all around a gully system roaring at each other. He eventually made us and we had no idea what he looked like. The next day was rained out which was pitty as we had a good plan to find some better stags on the hill top basins, it will have to wait until next year now.

My stag was at least 7 years old with massively ground down teeth. He has magnificent pearling and his left (3 points) antler is beautifully bladed siimilar to a Rusa. After two trips to the valley I finally have a representative stag. Next year I will be up the mountain finding the boy that beat him! I will be scouting the area in late August with dad and my youngest brother who has at the age of 18 suddenly got the hunting itch back.

Regards,

MOG

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