A YEAR LATER

I looked back along the ridge where I had seen some hinds, and standing there alone was another deer. Through the binos it looked like a very good, mature stag. With two heavy clubs protruding from his head, he definitely had antlers worth investigating.

A quick set up of the spotting scope revealed a beauty of a stag. He had plenty of mass on his tops and two huge brow tines. I quickly counted four on each top and knew then he was going to be a shooter. He was about 2km away so I wasted no time packing up my gear and dropping over the ridge to head in his direction.

I had one last side creek to move around to get to where the stag was, when – boom – a shot echoed through the valley below me. By the time I got there, he was nowhere to be seen and I had to assume he’d sneaked out of a gut and made his way promptly back to the bush. It was unfortunate timing and pretty disappointing but that’s hunting, especially on public land. I later found out the shot had come from a hunter who had got a nice 10 pointer a couple of gullies away. Since then I had been back in to look for that big stag again, but to no avail.

One night I