It was the Sika rut 2023, mid April to be exact, and Jed and I had made plans a while back to chase roaring Sika stags together.
It was the third night of our trip, and as we lay in our bags listening to the chorus of Sika stags roaring their hearts out, we chatted about the great times we had spent chasing them in the roars gone by.
Jed and I have been hunting Sika together for more than twenty years, and as Jed now lives five hours drive from me, it was great to be on a hunt together for the next week. Unbeknownst to us, the next few days would be one for the memory bank.
Dawn broke the next morning, and we were already 20 minutes from camp. We had planned to check out some of the benches and rolling country near where we had heard the stags roaring the night before, and then see what happened from there. The stags had gone quiet, but the bush was fairly good under foot, making for easy stalking.
During our morning hunt in the mature beech forest, we encountered several signs such as scrapes and numerous prints indicating the presence of stags. All we caught glimpsed that
