Twin Elements Podcast · Hunting Stories
Brisbane Valley Red Stags: A Week of Roars, Hind Calls, and 7 yards From A 6x6
There's a particular kind of chaos that comes with walking into peak red stag roar — five or six mature animals all feeding off each other's aggression on the same ridge, one roaring on top of the next, the whole hill sounding like a gunfight. That's exactly what James and I walked into on our week in Southeast Queensland, and it's the kind of week that reminds you why April is, hands down, the best month to be out chasing reds in this country.
In This Report
- A Different Kind of Country
- The Lesson That Cost Us a Stag (and Taught Us Everything)
- The Six-by-Six
- More Than Just the Hunting
A Different Kind of Country
We'd made the six-and-a-half-hour drive up from New South Wales after Tim and Taylor from Venture Hunting invited us onto a big parcel of land they'd been quietly smashing it on for a couple of seasons. The contrast hit us before we'd even parked the car — stepping out at 4am, stags were already roaring on both sides of us. We hadn't heard so much as a roar back home in New South Wales all season.
That's the trade-off with Southeast Queensland, really. It's quantity over quality — genetics aren't typically what you'd find in places like the Hunter Valley, but the sheer density of animals means opportunities every single morning. I'll admit my expectations needed recalibrating. The first mature stag James pointed out, I nearly dismissed — I was picturing something with a heavier frame and longer points, and here was a perfectly respectable four-by-five wandering past at forty metres that I almost didn't clock as a shooter. Over the following days, watching twenty to thirty stags a morning, I came to understand he genuinely was one of the better heads on the property.
Red Stags
The Lesson That Cost Us a Stag (and Taught Us Everything)
Early on, we set up on a young four-by-four just to test our hind calling. Rusty and a little too casual about it, we called, he roared back, we called again — and then, almost without warning, he covered several hundred metres of open ground in under thirty seconds and walked past us at thirty metres, catching us completely out of position.
“Red stags in open country will pick you up at two or three hundred metres if you're moving carelessly — if you can see them, they can absolutely see you.”
From that point on, every setup became a fifteen-to-twenty-minute commitment: find real concealment, settle in, and give the stag time. Some come screaming in at a dead sprint the second they commit. Others take an agonisingly long route, circling, going silent, testing the wind. We learned to read silence itself as a sign — often it meant they'd stopped roaring because they were closing the distance stealthily, not because they'd lost interest.
If there's one piece of advice I'd give a hunter chasing their first red with a bow or rifle, it's this: don't undervalue the hind call. We had spikers, two-by-twos, four-by-fours, even yearlings come running in from what felt like miles away, all because James and I ran a full range of calls together — his deeper, more nasal tone and my higher-pitched, needier fawn-like calls — to sound like a small herd of hinds waiting on a stag. Build it like an orchestra. Even by yourself on a mountain, roaring back and forth with a mate a hundred metres apart works — you don't need to sound good, you just need to sound like there's action happening.
The Six-by-Six
Our last morning on the property, we located a mature four-by-four roaring hard above us, wind perfect, thermals steady. We set up tight against a creek line, hoping the cold air would keep sucking down toward us, and started calling. Within minutes he was racing down through the eucalypts — and that's when everything changed, because a second stag we hadn't even clocked started closing in too.
Beaten By The Breeze
The mature red stag that winded us while coming into a hind call.
He took his time. Where every other stag that rut had committed and closed the gap in seconds, this one meandered in from eighty metres, taking a step, roaring, taking another step, roaring again — for what felt like an eternity but was probably two or three minutes. I had a Lantana bush ranged at thirty metres where I expected a clean broadside shot. He stopped right on it — and all I could see was the top of his head and antlers over a ridge steeper than I'd accounted for. So I redirected a couple of hind calls off to the side to straighten his line back toward us, and it worked; he came in nearly head-on.
I drew back early, holding for almost a full minute as he closed from fifteen metres to seven, weaving behind trees we'd planned our concealment around. At ten metres he stopped, quartering on, perfectly obscured behind a giant ironbark — the kind of moment where you almost laugh at how the universe is testing you. Then he stepped into seven metres and let out one last guttural roar, close enough that you could see right down his throat, and I released.
The arrow buried to the fletching at the base of his neck. Penetration was immediate and complete, and the impact spun him downhill in one motion. He was a heavy six-by-six — one of the better heads I've personally seen come out of that country — and easily the best stag of the trip.
What I didn't expect was how much that stag's frustration worked in our favour. He'd been roaring the entire approach not out of confidence, but out of not being able to find the hinds he could hear — giving me the rare gift of time to settle my heart rate before the shot ever presented itself. And in the moments right after, I found myself instinctively giving out a couple more hind calls, something James and I have learned matters more than people realise — keeping a big animal calm after the shot, rather than letting it bolt on adrenaline, can be the difference in how far it travels before going down.
The Trophy
More Than Just the Hunting
What made this trip different from most of what James and I do lately wasn't just the animal on the ground — it was the camp itself. Normally when we're filming, it's closer to a military operation: up before dark, hunt hard all day, film extra footage at night, eat, sleep, repeat. Efficient, but not exactly relaxed.
This was different. Sharing a camp with the Venture crew and a genuine mix of hunters — some chasing their first stag ever — brought back something we hadn't had in years: sitting around at night actually swapping stories, reflecting on what worked and what didn't, having a couple of drinks and talking about why we do this in the first place. It's easy to forget that side of hunting when you're grinding through a twenty-day overseas shoot. This week reminded us why camaraderie in camp matters just as much as what ends up on the ground.
We're heading back to more of this same country for Red Deer Camp part two, so stay tuned for the next chapter.
Read Red Deer Camp, Part Two →
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The Adventure Continues
Join the Twin Elements team as they head back into the Australian bush.
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This piece is adapted from Episode 17, "Red Deer Camp Part 1," of the Twin Elements Podcast.
