It was the 3rd morning of the hunt and as you saw earlier my buddy had already put one down. The numbers of deer are nothing like what we have here in the states. It is a completely different system there, the outfitters don't lease land, they buy animals. Which is actually pretty nice because they have landowners constantly "scouting" for them. They contact the outfitter, the outfitter goes out to the property and basically bids on the animal and then if harvested the outfitter pays the land owner. Of course the financial details were never shared.
So back to my hunt... The fog and rain had pretty much consumed the entire 2nd day, only hearing some red deer roar but never laying eyes on one, always just seemed right out of reach. The 3rd morning we placed ourselves on what I called the middle ridge, in hopes the fog would lift and we would see the roaring stags. At about 8am our hopes were taking place. We were glassing 2 sets of red deer. Each stag had 8-10 hinds with him. After about 10 minutes of sizing them up in the spotter we headed after the one I wanted. With the rain cleaning up his antlers and the ivory tips gleaming it was everything I had dreamed of.
We dropped off the middle ridge and got below the line of sight. The country is unbelievably steep. i conditioned for 2 1/2 months and still the guide was waiting for me on more than a few occasions. The fog rolled back in and made it a bit tough. He slowly pushed his hinds to the higher country but his continual roaring kept us slowly on tract. At about 11:45 another stag above him started roaring as well... I knew this was going to be out opportunity. We were on a small hill opposite of him and we could tell he stopped pushing his hinds to higher ground to avoid a confrontation. He seemed so close but still couldn't see him due to the fog. The entire time the wind was in our face and slowly it started to shift uphill, I couldn't believe we were about to lose it after all this time. The breeze settled across my face and I was content enough. There was a rock pile 80 yards in front of us and I knew if we could get to it I would be in perfect shooting position if the fog lifted. After the belly crawl we were set up and I could slowly start to make out shapes in the fog. I had been laying on the rock pile for 20 minutes when the wind picked up and with the rain I started to get very cold. But I also knew that this would eventually lift the fog as well and sure enough his rack began to materialize.
I waited for the hinds to clear and squeezed my first shot. He hunched up and the hinds bolted into the brush. Not wanting him to join them in a straight down hill dash, I took the high shoulder shot and dropped him in his tracks.
the shot ended up only being 135 yards but with the fog and the rain it just took that much time for it to come together. As far as stags go I know he is not the biggest but he is mine and a memory that will last a lifetime
Sorry for the ridiculous length of story
