Twin Elements Podcast · Hunting Stories
Quality Over Quantity: My Personal Best Red Stag (14 Points)
Southeast Queensland and the Hunter Valley are chalk and cheese. Up north, we were sifting through ten stags a day. Down here in New South Wales, James had spent a week straight on one property and seen four red deer, total. But the genetics on offer down here are arguably some of the best in the country — and after weeks of grinding through near-silence, that patience paid off in a way neither of us will forget.
In This Report
- Low Density, High Stakes
- The Half-Assed Moan That Changed Everything
- Full Draw, Full Trust
- A Bigger Story Than the Antlers
- James's Bonus Boar
From the Field
Low Density, High Stakes
The trade-off with this country is stark. Where Southeast Queensland gives you volume, the Hunter Valley demands you put in real miles for a shot at something special — a genuinely respectable 2x2 down here compares favourably to a good 5x5 up in Southeast Queensland, that's the difference in genetics between the two regions. It's a trade worth making: earlier in the trip, setting up twenty metres off a fresh wallow one morning, we let out a few hind calls and had a spiker work in from downwind inside ten minutes, closing to about ten metres before we lost interest in him. He wasn't the one we were after, but even a young stag on this property carried a frame you don't see on spikers further north — proof the density-for-genetics trade pays off before you ever get near the mature end of the class.
Quality genetics.
Later in the trip we had a heartbreaking near-miss with a stag we nicknamed Clubby — a limping, distinctive fourteen-pointer, easily the biggest I'd personally ever laid eyes on in the wild. We got him hind-calling and moving toward a boundary fence, only for a mob of kangaroos to wind us mid-approach and blow the whole thing. In a place with this few animals, a blown stalk like that stings — there's no guarantee you'll ever see that stag again.
That encounter set the tone for what followed: days of covering tens of kilometres, reading tracks and rubs around a dam for any sign a mature stag was even in the area, and coming home without so much as a roar to show for it.
From the Field
The Half-Assed Moan That Changed Everything
James and I were walking back to the car, having just struck out again, when we heard something that sounded almost exactly like a cow mooing. James stopped dead — there were no cows in that paddock. A few seconds later came the most unenthusiastic excuse for a roar either of us had heard all season. But it was enough. We went straight into setup mode.
“A lone spiker nearby had given him just enough competition to get frustrated and sound off. It's exactly the argument James and I make constantly against shooting spikers during the rut.”
That same young stag, easy as he'd have been to take, ended up being the reason we located what turned into the best red stag either of us has ever seen. We moved fast but carefully, cut the wind right, and set up against a stand of white poplar and ironbark that gave both of us — hunter and cameraman — solid concealment and a shared sightline. We'd learned enough from Clubby by this point to move deliberately rather than rush it.
Full Draw, Full Trust
I let out a few hind calls. He roared back immediately, closing the distance every time we called. Then a kangaroo hopped through at a hundred metres, and moments later James spotted him — a stag cresting the ridge, moving with real purpose, a spiker trailing just behind him.
Reading his frame as he closed the gap, I had a gut feeling straight away that he was a shooter. But this wasn't my property, and James had put in weeks of scouting to secure it — so before drawing, I actually asked him for the all-clear. He gave it. Looking back, James has said since that he very nearly told me not to shoot, wanting to sit with the encounter a little longer — and I'm grateful he didn't say it out loud, because what came next turned out to be the stag of a lifetime.
As he closed to twenty-five, then thirty metres, quartering toward us, I drew as his head passed behind a tree and settled the pin. The moment felt calmer than I expected — calmer, honestly, than the six-by-six I'd taken weeks earlier in Queensland, where the whole approach had been agonisingly slow. This one closed with real intent, and somehow that made it easier to stay composed. I timed the release with a final hind call to pull him broadside, and the arrow punched through his shoulder and into his heart.
Shot Sequence
He covered maybe thirty metres before going down — and just like in Queensland, I gave a few more hind calls right after the shot, hoping to keep him settled rather than let adrenaline carry him further. In the footage, you can actually see his ears pin back to that last call before he goes down for good. The spiker that had unknowingly given him away wandered in moments later, clearly confused about where his rival had gone.
A Bigger Story Than the Antlers
Lasting Impressions
When we walked up to him, the size difference from anything we'd handled before was obvious immediately. James and I estimate he was somewhere around five and a half to six and a half years old — not even the oldest class of stag, but still the biggest either of us has personally seen. His antlers told their own story: a near-perfect seven-by-seven on one side, and on the other, a heavier frame with nearly every tine snapped clean off — the signature of a stag that had been in serious fights, likely with something even bigger still out there. Bruising across his hams when we butchered him only confirmed it.
Because we were close to the car and he was still in good condition, we packed out almost the entire animal — both back legs, a front leg, all the neck meat, backstraps, and tenderloins.
Meat Retrieval and Butchering
We had backstrap and tenderloin in a stir-fry that same night, and it was some of the best eating either of us has had off a mature stag — proof, really, that hanging meat for days isn't the only path to a tender result if you process it properly and fast.
My dad flew in partway through this stretch, and getting to share the story and the meat with him — after a month of hunting the roar between Queensland and home — made the whole thing land even better. James has already got next winter's scouting on his mind, chasing whatever stag was big enough to leave those scars behind.
James's Bonus Boar
With the reds sitting at such low density down here, James and I split our time across the property on alternating days over those few weeks, each covering ground the other hadn't. On one of his own afternoons out — a proper mad dash with only an hour or so of light left — James was easing along a bench glassing the distant ridges when a pig showed up in front of him, close enough that he couldn't immediately pick whether it was a sow or a boar.
A quick stalk closed the gap to sixty metres, and he sent a Day Six arrow tipped with a pilot-cut broadhead through the vitals. The boar covered maybe seventy or eighty metres before going down, but the blood trail left behind it was heavy enough that, by his own account, a blind man could have followed it. By the time James got to him it was last light, headlamps on — a quick, clean finish to what had been an otherwise slow, grinding stretch chasing reds.
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This piece is adapted from Episode 19, "Red Roar Report," of the Twin Elements Podcast.
