Each year for the last 20 or so years I've been spending the month of September in the Hebrides and, for the most part, I've been walking the moor to remote trout lochs. The Isle of Lewis is said to have 2,000 trout lochs and while I'm not sure it is as many as that there are a lot and they generally provide the angler with a good walk as part of the fishing experience.



This year the weather wasn't great and for the most part it was either too windy, or not windy enough. Almost every day saw rain and the sky was dark and heavy for most of the 3 weeks.



The fish from these lochs are rarely big and most are returned to fight another day. Just occasionally the wandering angler might get lucky and find a loch that produces reasonable fish but anything over the one pound mark really is something of note. This is a decent Lewis trout:



Although Lewis is generally flat there are hills in some areas and on the only glorious day of the whole three weeks I took a little walk and snapped some pictures of the hills I would soon be climbing.



Usually during the time I spend on Lewis I manage to book 2 days for red stags and I have been trying to get my first red stag for about 4 years now. Sometimes luck, mostly in the form of weather, has been against me but this year I was determined that I was going up the hill and was going to shoot the first stag I saw no matter what. As it was I was only able to arrange one day this year but luck was on my side and the weather was suitable to head for the hills



In past years I had walked many miles over these hills and this year it was decided that a ghillie was necessary and it was great to have someone to carry lunch and even my rifle in its slip. Although I try and get as fit as possible for my trips past experience has shown me that it is possible to walk a very many miles and climb a considerable number of feet in pursuit of the September stag so all assistance was gratefully received on the climb up.

In past years on many days we hadn't seen any deer until well into the evening and so I was expecting many hours of hard walking before there was any prospect of a shot. None the less we kept the eyes open and our heads up and had been walking for only about 2 hours when the stalker in front of me went down onto his knees and I could see 3 stags running up the hill ahead of us. Within seconds the ghillie had the rifle in my hands and as we started to crawl forwards the head of a hind appeared on the skyline. The three deer we had disturbed vanished ahead of us and we crawled over a little rise to see a hind laid up with a little stag feeding to her left.

I set the rifle up and, bummer, couldn't find the stag in the scope. Where was he? Meanwhile the stalker was making some noises about him being a very small stag indeed, and he was right. However, my earlier decision was that I was shooting the first one I got the chance on so as far as I was concerned he was a shootable stag. I found him in the scope and he had moved slightly, clearly disturbed by all the movement of the other stags, and was now broadside on and walking slowly. In view of the comments about him being very small I thought it best to ask if I could shoot him and the stalker had hardly said yes when he stopped walking for a second and I fired. I didn't see or hear the strike but I saw the reaction and was confident that he was hit hard as he ran a few yards up the hill and into a little dip out of our sight.

I reloaded and all around was silent. The stalker was still watching carefully through his binos and eventually has asked if I'd reloaded. Of course this gave me some cause for concern as I was worried he'd seen something I hadn't but he put my concerns to rest and we went looking for my first red stag.

It was the ghillie who spotted him first after we walked past him and the ghillie did point out that the blood trail which he had the good sense to follow was, to say the least, impressive.

By one o'clock we were sitting eating lunch and enjoying the view with the gralloched stag at our feet. It must be said that there is nothing else to compare to sitting on the Scottish hillside in all its autumn glory with your first red stag at your feet.



Now it was time to get him down the hill and the ghillie took charge of operations while the stalker charted a suitable path over the rough ground. There is no mechanical extraction possible on most of this ground due to the very rough and steep nature and so man power is the only way. Of course I did offer to help, and did make some token gestures on especially difficult or uphill sections but, to be honest, the ghillie could drag the stag faster than I could walk and I may have been more of a hinderance than a help. However, I believe that if I shoot it then I should at least make some sort of effort to recover it.

It took us about 2 hours to drag the stag to the fence, with the road just a short distance further, and I took a few photos of the stag lying at the fence. I know that he doesn't fit the image of a trophy stag but for me these photos show just what it is that makes Scottish stag stalking such a wonderful experience with the heather in bloom, the hill wild and empty in the background and the relief of a successful stalk and getting the stag back to the road.

Fantastic report.

I'm very jealous of your pictures. Can you tell me which camera you use?

I'm jealous of your 4 stags Boghossian, though glad I didn't have to drag them home. :-)

The camera is a Canon PowerShot G9 which is fairly old (3 - 4 years) by digital camera standards. I couldn't really recommend it as it has a lot of pixels but a very small sensor and so is very prone to noise unless you are careful. I think Canon are at about G11 or something now. However, it has the advantage of being fairly small while still having a lot of features and so is ideal to take stalking in that respect.

I must confess that many of these photos are HDR processed - High Dynamic Range. If you haven't come across this before it is a digital technique that lets me get both the deer, the fence, the sky and the sunlit hill behind all correctly exposed. What actually happens is that I take 3 photos with different exposures and digital magic combines them to produce shots like the last two which would just not be possible without artificial lights or similar.

Maybe it is cheating but I think the pictures it is possible to produce, with some fine tuning and messing about, can be pretty good and I feel they help capture the moment.

Magical landscape and what a fantastic report. I enjoyed a lot reading it.Congratulations on an enjoyable and successful stalk.


Best-
Locksley,R.

Great story and great pictures.

Congrats,
K

That is great stuff. Wow, talk about looking forward to the month September. Good for you.
Kidd

Well done... your pictures and story brought back fond memories from my hunt in Scotland. It is truly picturesque country!

quote:

Originally posted by caorach:
I'm jealous of your 4 stags Boghossian, though glad I didn't have to drag them home. :-)

Open hill stalking means I'm never too far from the quad, though the trailer got a flat tyre halfway down...

Very well done sir!

I enjoyed your photos and report very much mate, looks like you might have enjoyed yourself a bit too.

Keep them coming!

ATB,

Amir

Thank you to everyone for their comments - I always enjoy the reports of others on their hunting trips, even when I'm lazy and fail to post in the thread, and so I thought to post a report of my own.

The Isle of Lewis (and Harris) is certainly quite a unique destination and much less visited than the Scottish mainland estates just by dint of the extra travel involved. Although the stags tend to be smaller than in most areas I would certainly recommend it as a destination for those looking for a special experience.

I have read that the stags on Harris are quite small but very well proportioned animals, with nice heads too.

It is amazing how much variation there is between the deer in Scotland.

Amhuinnsuidhe - North Harris Estate - is rightly famous for its stalking and its stags and it has certainly produced some good heads as well. As you say although their stags are smaller than those in your photos, for example, they are very good looking deer indeed. As you might imagine the area is famous for its long tradition of poaching and even the poachers, in my experience, believe that the Amhuinnsuidhe stags are the best on the island.

I believe there were some postings on the internet relating to a head which was found in a shed in the area and which has been measured and found, in UK terms, to be quite remarkable. My reading of it was that it was shot on Harris just after the war. So, there are good heads to be had but they are not common and even for highland deer my take, and I'm far from an expert, is that they are generally smaller in both body and antler.

I have seen royals from Lewis and would guess they had much less height in the antlers than the smallest stag in your photos.

Caorach

Thank you very much for posting.

Congratulations on your stag and I enjoyed reading your report and looking at the photo's very much indeed.

I would love to spend 3 weeks up there!

Superb.

Caorach,

Waidmannsheil, Buddy, on your first Stag, Well Done!

Excellent report & photos, thanks for relating, a jolly good stalking tale, too!

Smallish or not it is a beautiful Stag & fantastic Trophy IMO.

You're 2/3's on your way to an "almost" McNab - just have to find a grouse next time, too.

Thank you for sharing photos and story. Great scenery, and congratulation with your stag

caorach,

Thank you for sharing your stalk. I almost felt with you, eating lunch and enjoying the view. It certainly looks a magical place.

Congratulations.

Thank you to everyone for all the comments - as you can imagine I'm still chuffed at getting my first red stag. Over the last while I've had a few days out here in Ireland for a sika stag but luck has left me again so unfortunately there is no sika stag report yet this season. Even if I'm unlucky with the sika I must try and take some photos for a report as sharing, and seeing how and where others hunt, is part of the fun and one of the things that makes the internet such a good thing.

Wonderful pictures!
Good luck on the sika and please remember to post a pic when you get one

Thanks again - have you been hind stalking on this estate?

Hi Boghossian,

I have been on this estate for hinds and will post a few photos below of winter exploits - in some areas it is more like Asian sheep stalking than winter hinds! You will note that the first one is almost the same as one posted above but with snow.

Anders - I will attach a photo of a sika stag on his feet that I didn't shoot. The wee ones taste better but this made a good photo op

(Big Sigh)


Mate, you do these things as they should be done.

Thanks again for vicarious pleasures of your report.

Amir