March 31st 2004

I had a day between the departure of a group of clients and the arrival of the next. Cathy, the best guide I have, had told me of a killer stag that was in section 3. I always try to remove these stags from the gene pool for obvious reasons. Many hunters will not shoot them and ignorant landowners just let them roam free, impregnating all the hinds and degrading the trophy quality of the herd.

4:30 AM:
Breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs, juice, toast with butter and jam and espresso coffee. Excuse me for saying so, but American style coffee is just disgusting. When I was back in the USA a couple years ago I was glad to see that at least in Miami they have learned how to make the good stuff. After breakfast I went out to the truck and drove the 10 km to section 3.

5:30 AM:
Parked the truck at the South end of the section. Got out and listened for awhile to the roaring. There were two stags roaring to the east about 1km away and another to the North West. The wind was steady from the North East. I decided to go after the ones to the East. They appeared to be moving to the North, slowly herding their harems into the thick stuff for the day. I walked slowly in the darkness at first and then picked up the pace as it started to get brighter. After going about 3 km I was out in front of the stags and cut to the East to intercept them. By now I could see enough to glass with my Zeiss binoculars. They really make a difference in low light.

At around 7 Am I had covered another 2 km, slowly walking and glassing and saw what I thought at first was a stag 500 meters away. It was a hind, but very large and old. She was walking slowly and looking in all directions. A scout if I ever saw one. After letting her disappear behind a hill I moved into position to see what was following her. Two more hinds appeared and I took a kneeling position and waited. A few minutes later I saw him. He was a huge old bull with a light reddish color coat and thick unbranched antlers, the kind that kill good stags because they don�t lock up in battle. They just push on through and make very deep wounds. He looked right at me but I had a good crosswind and remained completely still. When he was convinced that nothing was wrong he kept walking. As he passed behind some bushes I raise the model 70 and removed the safety. When he reappeared I shot him high on the shoulder where it joins the neck. He went straight down as if squashed by a giant hand. I reloaded and kept the red dot on him. Many a stag has looked to be down for good only to get back up and never be seen again. After a minute or so I approached the downed stag and saw that he was still alive, a second shot in the chest followed. It was now 8:10 AM.

3 km back to the truck cutting straight across and a cross country drive back to the stag took about half an hour and another half hour to load him. The trick to this, when you don�t have a winch, is to dig out holes for the back tires. This brings the bed of the truck down far enough for one man to load a 280 kg stag onto a pickup.

On butchering we found that neither of the bullets had exited. In 1998 I had a bad experience with sierra pro hunter bullets in a .300 Winchester and hadn�t used them again until this year in my .270, telling myself that the previous failure was due to a 3100 fps loading and that they should perform fine at 2900 fps. It is hard to stay away from them because they are so darn accurate. After taking several dozen dry hinds on different cull operations, I was convinced that they would do for Stags. How wrong I was, the first shot broke his neck but did not go past the midline of his body. The second shot was observed to have penetrated � of the way through his chest. All the hinds shot from broadside with this load were completely penetrated. I was previously using x bullets with end to end penetration on stag and switched to sierra because of the cost difference and the accuracy. Accubonds are next on the list to try out.


John

HOLLY SMOKES!!! Thats very nice

Great story!!...sakofan..

Hi John,

A very similar stag to one that I passed on when hunting earlier last month. My guide said later we should have taken that one to get it out of the herd. Sounds like you had a great hunt.

Hawkeye47

You will like the 180 Accubonds. They are about perfect for Stag-size game. I have been testing them for a long time and they work great. Accubonds are now my primary bullet in my .300 WSM on everything up to Elk/Zebra-size game.

Weidmannsheil! Lots of character, lovely animal. Nice to have a face to put on the name as well.
- mike

Dave James, Sakofan, Hawkeye47, James R, MHO; Thanks to all.

Nice animal! BTW have you ever seen damage done by such 'killer' stags? How much do you think he weighed...200kg?

If you would have asked me after I got done loading him, I would have said that he weighed about a ton! He must have weighed around 280 kg. I have seen wounds from these stags. Saw one this year, it looked like a bullet hole in one side and out the othe of the neck. On skinning we saw that it was from a fight. Deep and festering wounds, the stag was wasting away.

John,

You have email.

Thanks.