Prefix
Here follows a brief write up of two days stalking Red Stags in the Scottish Highlands with my father. He and I, along with my brother, are off to RSA in May next year with @KMG Hunting Safaris to hunt Kudu. In the build up to that trip I have drawn on the collective expertise of this forum regularly, and I thought the least that I could do in return is share a little slice of my home in Scotland with you all.
The Glen
We heard our first roars from the truck.
There is no preparing for what that sound does to you. It rolls down the hillside; deep, guttural and ancient. I have never (yet) heard the death bellow of a Cape Buffalo or the roar of a predatory lion, but even in my ignorance I would be willing to claim that same “other-worldliness” status for the prehistoric sounds of rutting Red Stags roaring at one another across Glens and open hills. It is the kind of sound that, even without context, can stop a man in his tracks and force him to consider his place on this earth.
We had met before sunrise, at seven, at the bottom of a gravel track that runs for several miles into a glen I will describe but not name. By the time you have driven it, with dry stone walls on the one hand, cliff faces and stands of timber on the other, and no sign of man newer than the walls themselves, you have left the modern world behind in a way very few places in Britain still allow. The ground was wet from a week of rain, the wind was steady from the west, which was exactly what we wanted, and showers passed through all day.
“We” in this case consisted of the three of us. Well, four really. Myself, my father, our guide and his trusty hound. My dad and I used to stalk deer together when I was younger and lived at home. I have since moved out, spent a decade in the Royal Navy and started a family of my own 500 miles away in Scotland. My mother was at home with my fiancee looking after our 18 month old twin boys so that the 2 of us could be out together. Our guide, who I will leave anonymous, has worked this ground for more than a decade; with him came his black Labrador, there to scent deer and track down any wounded or killed animal.
By the time we had geared up, breeks, tweeds, shirts & ties, and begun the sixteen-hundred-foot climb onto the hill, the sun was breaking over the hilltops and we were climbing through the cloud and out above it. The high ground opened out before us, pale hill grass, dense heather and dark rock above, the forestry a black fringe at the foot of it all. It is always a tough slog over difficult ground to gain the elevation you need to pursue these animals, but on this occasion we were quickly rewarded.
A Royal we could not touch
Not long after gaining the high ground we found him: a magnificent twelve-point stag, roaring his authority across a valley he had no intention of leaving.
Here I want to pause the narrative, because what we did next explains Scottish stalking better than any description of it could. "Private land" is sometimes dismissed, particularly (I perceive anyway) by American hunters, as a kind of cheating — the assumption being that private means enclosed. For readers used to American private-land hunts or fenced South African properties, it is worth being clear about what private means here: it describes the ground we had permission to hunt, not an enclosure. More than four thousand acres of open hill and forest, no fences, no tarmac, no infrastructure of any kind and deer moving freely across an invisible boundary that follows natural features. On this estate that boundary is the watershed: as long as the rain that falls on a hillside runs down into our glen, it is our ground to shoot over; the moment it runs down the other side, it belongs to the neighbouring estate.
The trouble was, it appeared this stag also understood our rulebook! Our guide knew him, and knew where his hinds were held; better than sixty of them, on the far side of the ridge. There was no realistic way to stalk him and shoot him on the ground we had permission to hunt. So we did the only thing the day allowed: we watched him, appreciated his majesty, and moved on. A stag of that quality in plain view, untouchable, is one of the great honest pleasures of the open hill.
Four stags on a ridge
The morning's centrepiece came when we reached a vantage point high on the hill, looking out over a ridgeline perhaps five hundred feet above the treeline. Along half a mile of that ridge, four stags were competing for hinds and supremacy.
The master of the ridge was a big eight-pointer with exceptionally thick, wide-set antlers, holding at least two dozen hinds in a tight herd. Below him, an older stag ran perhaps a dozen hinds of his own, but ran them differently: he was mobile, agitated, working his hinds along the ridge and down towards the treeline as the morning wore on. Around both of them orbited two younger stags, full of ambition, harrying the elders for hinds and territory at every opportunity.
What followed was one of the highlights of the day: false charges, chases, roars traded back and forth along the skyline — everything but locked horns. The two younger stags were eventually seen off. The big eight-pointer, dominant and untroubled, continued to parade his ridge and no stalk to him was possible: the ground between us was wide open, and he had all the eyes of his hinds to watch it for him.
But the older stag was coming down the glen, hinds and all, towards the treeline.
The stalk
We began working our way down as soon as the young stags had been moved on, covering perhaps half a mile in the way that half a mile is covered on the open hill — slowly, on crouched legs, using crevices, rises and peat crags for cover, the ground pulling at our boots, and expecting every corner we turned to reveal the stag we were after. The sight lines here are the hill's own defence: glens, peaks, crags and crevices fold into each other so effectively that we heard dozens of stags that morning before we saw any of them, if we saw them at all. Several times hope started to dwindle. We reached the bottom of the ridgeline with nothing in sight, and for a while it felt as though the morning had slipped away from us.
The ridge fell away steeply towards the treeline, and we worked our way carefully around it until we found ourselves on a ledge. Exposed, no more than three or four metres deep and with a view of the back of the ridge we had spent the morning observing: it was an incredibly steep descent of several hundred feet down to the trees. And there, ten or twenty yards from the edge of the treeline, was the hind herd. The stag, the older beast, not the eight-pointer, was patrolling up and down his line of hinds, still clearly lit up from his morning's encounters.
He was a shooter, and there was no time for deliberation. He and his hinds would be in the forest before we knew it.
The shot
I was carrying my Musgrave Model 90, a 22-inch barrel chambered in 7x57 Mauser — though as an Englishman I always prefer and, exclusively use, the British designation of .275 Rigby. The load was one of my own: a 160-grain Nosler Partition over a modest dose of Vihtavuori N550 at circa 2,600 feet per second, zeroed at a hundred metres and familiar to me out to three hundred. I set up on the ridge, extended the bipod, and immediately realised I could not shoot prone. The drop down to the stag was so steep that lying down put the animal out of sight beneath the horizon of the ridge itself.
There was no time to be clever about it. He was moving, his hinds were moving, the forest was waiting for them. I shuffled up onto my knees at the edge of the ridgeline, bipod legs planted firmly into the ground, and took the downward angle from there. I watched him skid to a stop at the end of his patrol line, and the guide called the range: one hundred and fifty yards. Very comfortable. He was slightly quartering towards me, so I centred the reticle on his nearside shoulder and squeezed.
He reared up onto his back legs. I chambered another round and watched him and his hinds make for the cover of the conifers. I was confident I had made a good shot, and my dad who had been watching next to me through his binoculars said the same thing, confidently calling a lung shot based on the stag’s reaction. The guide, quietly stoic as ever, said little, but his lab was already excited about the next part of the hunt!
We zigzagged down to the treeline and the lab raced off into the trees. I stopped where I believed I had shot him and looked for blood, and found nothing. Slightly disheartened I looked up, and through a gap in the trees, no more than twenty yards away, I saw him. Dead where he lay.
The cost of rutting
He was a handsome nine-point stag with a well-formed cup on one side. No doubt in his prime, he would have been a ten-pointer or better, but he was past that prime. This was the fifteenth of October, deep in the rut's endgame, and he had little body condition left after weeks of roaring and holding and fighting. He carried an eight-inch gash above one shoulder, about a fortnight old, from a clash with another stag. His molars were worn down to almost nothing and his front teeth were loose in his skull. The guide, my father and I all agreed: this stag would have been unlikely to survive until Christmas.
The Partition had done exactly what it was designed to do. It entered an inch or so above and behind his near shoulder, destroyed both lungs and the front edge of his liver, and exited cleanly. Textbook terminal performance.
The point where he lay was inaccessible to the quadbike, so we gralloched him on the spot, and the guide and I dragged him off the hill by hand — a solid hour's work down to the road and the back of the truck. A great trophy, and an extremely ethical kill.
Last light
It should be said plainly, for anyone comparing trophies across countries: a Scottish hill stag deserves to be judged on his own terms, not against the largest heads taken in Spain or New Zealand, or even the Scottish Lowlands. These beasts live out an extremely difficult existence on a desolate landscape, and in my mind, the metric of one’s success up here cannot be measured by points.
We went out again the next day to try to get a stag for my father. The conditions were against us from the outset; almost no wind, which is the worst thing the open hill can do to you, and several good stalks came to nothing. He finished empty-handed but completely content, and he has already claimed first shot next year! In May the three of us — dad, brother and I — fly to South Africa for the kudu rut. And one day, before too long if I have anything to do with it, my sons will get their first stag on the open hill too.
The stag hangs on the wall of my study at home now. Every time I look at him, I get to remember a special day spent stalking with my father which is, I have come to believe, the entire point of this wonderful, frustrating, exhausting, exhilarating, magical endeavor.
Here follows a brief write up of two days stalking Red Stags in the Scottish Highlands with my father. He and I, along with my brother, are off to RSA in May next year with @KMG Hunting Safaris to hunt Kudu. In the build up to that trip I have drawn on the collective expertise of this forum regularly, and I thought the least that I could do in return is share a little slice of my home in Scotland with you all.
The Glen
We heard our first roars from the truck.
There is no preparing for what that sound does to you. It rolls down the hillside; deep, guttural and ancient. I have never (yet) heard the death bellow of a Cape Buffalo or the roar of a predatory lion, but even in my ignorance I would be willing to claim that same “other-worldliness” status for the prehistoric sounds of rutting Red Stags roaring at one another across Glens and open hills. It is the kind of sound that, even without context, can stop a man in his tracks and force him to consider his place on this earth.
We had met before sunrise, at seven, at the bottom of a gravel track that runs for several miles into a glen I will describe but not name. By the time you have driven it, with dry stone walls on the one hand, cliff faces and stands of timber on the other, and no sign of man newer than the walls themselves, you have left the modern world behind in a way very few places in Britain still allow. The ground was wet from a week of rain, the wind was steady from the west, which was exactly what we wanted, and showers passed through all day.
“We” in this case consisted of the three of us. Well, four really. Myself, my father, our guide and his trusty hound. My dad and I used to stalk deer together when I was younger and lived at home. I have since moved out, spent a decade in the Royal Navy and started a family of my own 500 miles away in Scotland. My mother was at home with my fiancee looking after our 18 month old twin boys so that the 2 of us could be out together. Our guide, who I will leave anonymous, has worked this ground for more than a decade; with him came his black Labrador, there to scent deer and track down any wounded or killed animal.
By the time we had geared up, breeks, tweeds, shirts & ties, and begun the sixteen-hundred-foot climb onto the hill, the sun was breaking over the hilltops and we were climbing through the cloud and out above it. The high ground opened out before us, pale hill grass, dense heather and dark rock above, the forestry a black fringe at the foot of it all. It is always a tough slog over difficult ground to gain the elevation you need to pursue these animals, but on this occasion we were quickly rewarded.
A Royal we could not touch
Not long after gaining the high ground we found him: a magnificent twelve-point stag, roaring his authority across a valley he had no intention of leaving.
Here I want to pause the narrative, because what we did next explains Scottish stalking better than any description of it could. "Private land" is sometimes dismissed, particularly (I perceive anyway) by American hunters, as a kind of cheating — the assumption being that private means enclosed. For readers used to American private-land hunts or fenced South African properties, it is worth being clear about what private means here: it describes the ground we had permission to hunt, not an enclosure. More than four thousand acres of open hill and forest, no fences, no tarmac, no infrastructure of any kind and deer moving freely across an invisible boundary that follows natural features. On this estate that boundary is the watershed: as long as the rain that falls on a hillside runs down into our glen, it is our ground to shoot over; the moment it runs down the other side, it belongs to the neighbouring estate.
The trouble was, it appeared this stag also understood our rulebook! Our guide knew him, and knew where his hinds were held; better than sixty of them, on the far side of the ridge. There was no realistic way to stalk him and shoot him on the ground we had permission to hunt. So we did the only thing the day allowed: we watched him, appreciated his majesty, and moved on. A stag of that quality in plain view, untouchable, is one of the great honest pleasures of the open hill.
Four stags on a ridge
The morning's centrepiece came when we reached a vantage point high on the hill, looking out over a ridgeline perhaps five hundred feet above the treeline. Along half a mile of that ridge, four stags were competing for hinds and supremacy.
The master of the ridge was a big eight-pointer with exceptionally thick, wide-set antlers, holding at least two dozen hinds in a tight herd. Below him, an older stag ran perhaps a dozen hinds of his own, but ran them differently: he was mobile, agitated, working his hinds along the ridge and down towards the treeline as the morning wore on. Around both of them orbited two younger stags, full of ambition, harrying the elders for hinds and territory at every opportunity.
What followed was one of the highlights of the day: false charges, chases, roars traded back and forth along the skyline — everything but locked horns. The two younger stags were eventually seen off. The big eight-pointer, dominant and untroubled, continued to parade his ridge and no stalk to him was possible: the ground between us was wide open, and he had all the eyes of his hinds to watch it for him.
But the older stag was coming down the glen, hinds and all, towards the treeline.
The stalk
We began working our way down as soon as the young stags had been moved on, covering perhaps half a mile in the way that half a mile is covered on the open hill — slowly, on crouched legs, using crevices, rises and peat crags for cover, the ground pulling at our boots, and expecting every corner we turned to reveal the stag we were after. The sight lines here are the hill's own defence: glens, peaks, crags and crevices fold into each other so effectively that we heard dozens of stags that morning before we saw any of them, if we saw them at all. Several times hope started to dwindle. We reached the bottom of the ridgeline with nothing in sight, and for a while it felt as though the morning had slipped away from us.
The ridge fell away steeply towards the treeline, and we worked our way carefully around it until we found ourselves on a ledge. Exposed, no more than three or four metres deep and with a view of the back of the ridge we had spent the morning observing: it was an incredibly steep descent of several hundred feet down to the trees. And there, ten or twenty yards from the edge of the treeline, was the hind herd. The stag, the older beast, not the eight-pointer, was patrolling up and down his line of hinds, still clearly lit up from his morning's encounters.
He was a shooter, and there was no time for deliberation. He and his hinds would be in the forest before we knew it.
The shot
I was carrying my Musgrave Model 90, a 22-inch barrel chambered in 7x57 Mauser — though as an Englishman I always prefer and, exclusively use, the British designation of .275 Rigby. The load was one of my own: a 160-grain Nosler Partition over a modest dose of Vihtavuori N550 at circa 2,600 feet per second, zeroed at a hundred metres and familiar to me out to three hundred. I set up on the ridge, extended the bipod, and immediately realised I could not shoot prone. The drop down to the stag was so steep that lying down put the animal out of sight beneath the horizon of the ridge itself.
There was no time to be clever about it. He was moving, his hinds were moving, the forest was waiting for them. I shuffled up onto my knees at the edge of the ridgeline, bipod legs planted firmly into the ground, and took the downward angle from there. I watched him skid to a stop at the end of his patrol line, and the guide called the range: one hundred and fifty yards. Very comfortable. He was slightly quartering towards me, so I centred the reticle on his nearside shoulder and squeezed.
He reared up onto his back legs. I chambered another round and watched him and his hinds make for the cover of the conifers. I was confident I had made a good shot, and my dad who had been watching next to me through his binoculars said the same thing, confidently calling a lung shot based on the stag’s reaction. The guide, quietly stoic as ever, said little, but his lab was already excited about the next part of the hunt!
We zigzagged down to the treeline and the lab raced off into the trees. I stopped where I believed I had shot him and looked for blood, and found nothing. Slightly disheartened I looked up, and through a gap in the trees, no more than twenty yards away, I saw him. Dead where he lay.
The cost of rutting
He was a handsome nine-point stag with a well-formed cup on one side. No doubt in his prime, he would have been a ten-pointer or better, but he was past that prime. This was the fifteenth of October, deep in the rut's endgame, and he had little body condition left after weeks of roaring and holding and fighting. He carried an eight-inch gash above one shoulder, about a fortnight old, from a clash with another stag. His molars were worn down to almost nothing and his front teeth were loose in his skull. The guide, my father and I all agreed: this stag would have been unlikely to survive until Christmas.
The Partition had done exactly what it was designed to do. It entered an inch or so above and behind his near shoulder, destroyed both lungs and the front edge of his liver, and exited cleanly. Textbook terminal performance.
The point where he lay was inaccessible to the quadbike, so we gralloched him on the spot, and the guide and I dragged him off the hill by hand — a solid hour's work down to the road and the back of the truck. A great trophy, and an extremely ethical kill.
Last light
It should be said plainly, for anyone comparing trophies across countries: a Scottish hill stag deserves to be judged on his own terms, not against the largest heads taken in Spain or New Zealand, or even the Scottish Lowlands. These beasts live out an extremely difficult existence on a desolate landscape, and in my mind, the metric of one’s success up here cannot be measured by points.
We went out again the next day to try to get a stag for my father. The conditions were against us from the outset; almost no wind, which is the worst thing the open hill can do to you, and several good stalks came to nothing. He finished empty-handed but completely content, and he has already claimed first shot next year! In May the three of us — dad, brother and I — fly to South Africa for the kudu rut. And one day, before too long if I have anything to do with it, my sons will get their first stag on the open hill too.
The stag hangs on the wall of my study at home now. Every time I look at him, I get to remember a special day spent stalking with my father which is, I have come to believe, the entire point of this wonderful, frustrating, exhausting, exhilarating, magical endeavor.
