Where Monsters Roar

Chasing Red Stag in New Zealand Is a Deer Hunter’s Dream.

- Anthony Licata

STARTING TO HUFF AND SWEAT, I was ready for my first break of the climb when we saw a tremendous stag effortlessly gliding up the ridge high above us. We only had a brief look, but it was enough. My hunting partner Brett Flaugher, guide Marcus Eccles, and I quickly bailed around the edge of the ridge and rushed for the valley on the other side to try and cut the stag off.

When we got there, the stag wasn’t in any of the open areas of ferns and tussocks, so keeping the wind in our favor, we poked into the gullies and ravines lining the drainage, glassing into the many fingers of timber and head-high brush. After about an hour of slow and methodical hunting, we decided to climb back over the ridge, thinking that perhaps the stag had never climbed over the top. But first, we paused to glass one more time.

“There he is,” Eccles said. We all sank to the ground and zeroed in on the stag, 300 yards across the valley, walking through a thick tangle of brush, his massive spread of antlers busting through the vegetation.

We had stopped on a rocky point with good cover and a superb view of the valley. I rested my rifle solidly on my pack and lay prone, and found the stag in my scope just as he bedded down and disappeared. Only the dark tines of his massive crown were visible over the brush.

There was nothing to do but look at one another and shrug. Trying to get the stag to stand would probably send him crashing away with no chance for a shot. And when a big-game animal beds, it can be up again in a few minutes—or hours. We knew we were probably in for a long wait, but what we didn’t know was that this hunt would end in a way none of us expected.

Deer Paradise