Australia is just one of those lands that nearly everyone dreams about visiting in their lifetime.  For those that have had fortunate enough to visit they anxiously await their return trip.  

My opportunity to make my journey halfway around the world came in the form of an email last year from my sister announcing that her and her family would be relocating to Melbourne for the next 3 years.  Perfect.  I now had the  excuse I've been waiting for to make this trip.

After discussions(or perhaps my begging?) with my wife and twin daughters, we started the planning process to make the journey from home in south central Pennsylania to Oz in April of 2017.  In case you don't know, April "coincidentally" just happens to be peak roar for the free range red stag in Queensland.  

When traveling halfway around the world, hours and hours of research was in order to not only nail down travel logistics, passports, travel visas, etc but also more importantly(at least to me) finding a great place to chase stags was in order.  More to come later on this journey.............in the meantime here is a teaser landscape picture from a side trip to Tasmania.  

I killed my first deer with a flintlock muzzleloader in the tuscarora state forest. My family camp is still there off laurel run rd. Wonder how far you are from there.

Bingo, Bango, Bingo I'm all over this.  Bring it on.

My dream hunt can't wait to read this

Etter,
If I am correct Laurel Run Road is near Colonel Denning State Park?  By air miles I am not far away but as you know the roads are quite winding and no straight stretches anywhere around.  My address is East Waterford but I am actually 15 minutes from town over on Rt 35 near the Juniata/Huntingdon Co line.  If you ever head back up to your family's camp, by all means get in contact with me. It would roughly a half hour away and we have some pretty nice hunting on our farm.  Clay

Back to the adventure.....

I recalled an acquaintance hunting red stag a few years back so after some emails and phone calls he got me some contact info with a fellow he had hunted with in 2012.  Communicating with the 14 hour time difference in Australia was not always easy but finally all the connections were made and the trip was scheduled with a 7 day hunt beginning the second week of April.  

My brother in law is a beginning hunter, and quite lucky I might add(taking a GA hog and NJ whitetail buck on his first 2 bowhunts), so he jumped at the chance to tag along on this adventure.  In addition, a buddy from Georgia and his hunting partner joined in on the hunt plans.  4 guys on 20,000 acres of prime cattle ranch country in the peak of the roar...what could be better?

Finally the time came to make the journey and it was tough to mentally prepare for 22 hours of flight time.  My kids were less enthused about the flight than I expected and to make matters worse we missed our first connection. This resulted in us being re-routed to Houston, sleeping on the floor of an airport, a flight to LAX and then a 12 hour layover in Los Angeles.  We ultimately arrived in Australia a day late.  The Aussie saying "No Worries" must have been coined by folks traveling by plane because what can you do but be patient?

Despite the flight debacle I tell everyone to never skip a chance to go to Australia just because of the flights.  The 15 hour leg from LAX to OZ was really much better than I was dreading.  Actually jet lag was much better than expected and we hit the ground running to do as much sightseeing as possible before my hunt the following week.  Hence the photos from Cradle Mountain Park in Tasmania......make sure you add that to your travel plans.  The scenery was unreal.

 

At the end of our few days of sightseeing it was time to pack up and fly once again(I had 11 flights in a 2 week period on this adventure).  As we flew over the mountains between Melbourne and Brisbane I marveled at the vastness and the rugged landscape.  Once we landed we met with our guide to travel an hour and a half to his "man cave" which would be our base camp for this trip.  Within the first 5 minutes of meeting Wayne I knew we were going to hit it off with no problem.  I don't think I have ever laughed so hard in a week's time as he has to be one of the funniest characters I have ever had the pleasure to meet.  As we would find out, the only thing better than his sense of humor was his hunting skills.  This guy has "been there done that" and hunted all over the world.  His camp was fill of mounts, pictures, artifacts, etc from his various expeditions. Despite being only in his late 40's he has had a few lifetimes worth of hunting experience.  Unreal.  

Due to some scheduling issues my buddy from Georgia would not be arriving until the next day so my brother-in-law and I settled into camp.  After shooting our bows and getting gear ready for our next day's hunt, Wayne asked me if I wanted to ride over to the ranch to pick up the 3 guys that were there on their last day of their hunt. Upon picking up the hunters, we found that 2 out of the 3 had taken stags on that very afternoon.  Talk about starting off the hunt on a high note.  When we got back to camp there was certainly a buzz of excitement.

Here are some examples of the size of free range stags we are hunting in Australia.  The original red deer were given to Queensland as a gift from the queen back in the early 1800's.   The original animals were released into the wild about 40 minutes from where we were hunting so the reds in that area are a pure strain of the Scottish Highland strain.   They are smaller in body size and smaller antlers than the Hungarian strain that is typically raised in game farms in New Zealand.   What the free range stags lack in antler potential they make up for it in their rut intensity and amount of roaring.  In fact the night before our hunt I woke up at midnight and could hear a stag roaring within 100 yards of the cabins and right in among a few homes.  It roared throughout the night and continued to roar even as we left to head out for our first morning hunt.  

If you have never heard a red stag roar I would suggest that you go onto You Tube so you can get the full effect of what this animal vocalizes.  It is such an unsual sound (similar to a mixture of an angus bull and a lion) and just as exciting as hearing an elk bugle.  

 

Thanks for posting, I'm really interested in your adventure. I'm planning to go to New Zealand for stag cause I heard I don't need a guide and am wanting a DIY stag hunt.
Can I do a stag hunt in Australia by myself?
I'm from Oregon so I need a visa to go to Australia? How hard and time consuming is that?
Does New Zealand need me to have a visa?

I'm not real familiar with the New Zealand regulations but I have read that you can DIY hunt there.  As for Australia, each state is different but Queensland does not permit hunting on their public lands even though red deer are classified as an invasive species. As a result it is a requirement to hunt private land. There might be other states that permit public land hunting but I am not real certain.  New South Wales has red deer as well so you might want to check their regs.   I believe the Victoria state allows public land hunting.  As for a visa it is pretty simple.  We were able to get an ETA, which is an electronic travel visa for like $20.  It is an on-line process right on the government's site. Not sure on the New Zealand visa but it seems like most countries require something similar.

As we arrived at the hunting property in the dark, before we even closed the truck door a stag roared in the distance. We immediately took off and tracked his location by his frequent roaring.  Once we got within a few hundred yards it was apparent he was in a small open meadow.  I allowed my brother in law to go after him and I hung back about 80 yards to watch.  The 4x4 stag continued to roar and 3 hinds(female red deer) stood at the far end of the meadow staring in our direction.  As the stag disappeared from my view I saw my brother in law come to full draw and shoot.  It was a miss and the stag started a loud barking sound and began to circle around him to try and catch his wind. Eventually the stag trotted off and continued to bark as he went away from us.  

First 30 minutes of the hunt and he already got a shot at a stag!  You would think that after 32 years of bowhunting I would know better but I was thinking "this is going to be easy".  Later I would learn how wrong I was in that initial assessment.

It was now my turn to be the hunter and we headed a distance along a creek bed to a large open meadow of approximately 50 acres that was unfortunately filled with beef cattle.  At the far end of the meadow was a really big roaring stag with 4 hinds. Through our binos he appeared to be a 6x6.  As we stood there getting ready to make a stalk another stag begins to roar from the bush as he followed his hind into the same meadow.  The original small herd was now on full alert from this other approaching stag plus 2 spike stags entered the scene.  This is where the hunting gets tricky.  Not only do you have to contend with all of those red deer eyes but now we had to thread between a bunch of cattle as well.  

It didn't take long to realize how difficult the cattle make the hunting.  Every time you would try to sneak around them they would either come towards you or stampede off in the other direction.  The red deer seemed to almost like to feed near the cattle for their protection.  You almost had to spend more time trying to plan a route to avoid the cattle more than how to stalk the deer.

As I skirted the cattle I dropped into a large gully which would allow me to remain out of sight of the deer and cover the needed distance.  After getting to within 100 yards I peered over the high grasses and realized that the original big stag had taken over the other herd so now he had about a dozen hinds.  The defeated stag was now headed away from me and continued to travel a few hundred yards back into the bush.  I knew it was going to be tough with the open terrain but I started to crawl to close the distance.  The herd was slowly feeding their way to a brushy gully to bed.  With the sun warming up this basin the winds began to swirl and we opted to back out to allow the herd to bed with the intention of hunting them either that afternoon or the next morning when the winds were favorable.

With only one morning's worth of hunting in the books I was already on cloud nine with all of the action.  

Here is a picture of the creek bottom and pastures where we hunted our first morning.

 

Midday the temps were reaching in the lower 80 degree range and somewhat humid.  The stags would really shut down by about 9am and then get cranked up again about 3pm.  In the middle of the day it was time to rehydrate and sling some arrows around camp.  

When we returned to camp at about 11am from our first mornings hunt, the stag that had roared during the middle of the night was now roaring right behind the neighbor's house.  After he roared about a dozen times his hinds stepped out into a pasture and he followed them up a hillside.  He was a nice 4x5 and after he went out of sight we decided we might as well attempt to pursue him.  After climbing the ridge we realized he was in an impenetrable thicket on the back side so we backed out.

Despite the fact that a tropical cyclone had hit this area of Queensland with 6" of rain a week and a half before we arrived, the ground was very dry and leaves were crunchy.  It was very difficult to sneak through the thick woods quietly and much of our hunting took place while trying to sneak up on sharp eyed red deer as they were out in the open pastures and broken terrain.  It was amazing how much dew they would get every night and then be bone dry within 2 hours after daylight. As a result of the dew you would be soaked from the waist down within the first 100 yards in the morning but then the sun would bake you and have you sweating profusely in no time.  

As a result of the humid climate, rather than cotton I wore my quick drying elk hunting clothing for this trip.  Lightweight synthetics and merino wool were ideal.  In addition, I also wore gaiters and lightweight hikers to keep feet dry but also allow good grip on some of the steep, rocky hillsides.

My buddy from Georgia arrived midday on the first day of my hunt so he gathered his gear in time for us to head out to our first evening's hunt.  We decided to hunt the eastern edge of the ranch adn save the spot we hunted earlier for the following morning.  My brother in law went with the guide and the rest of us went out on our own in different drainages.  I headed up a long, open climb through a large pasture and then planned to ease along a fenceline so I could hear and see on both sides of the ridge.  

Here is the fenceline that I took that evening as I hunted the ridgelines on the right side of the valley.



As I crested the top, the scenery to the right was incredible as it overlooked a huge lake.  The property bordered the lake and I knew anything within sight would be fair game.  I continued to sneak along listening for roars and glassing the various openings for feeding reds.



After about 2 hours of taking in the scenery I came to a high point on the ridge and decided to sit there until dark to see if anything roared or would come out to feed.  I hadn't any more than set down my bow and pack when the wind gusts became quite strong.  The grasses in the meadow below were roughly chest high and with the swaying in the wind I could see 2 large darks spots against the predominantly green background.  My binos revealed a whopper(or cracker as the Aussies say) of a 6x5 and a hind feeding in the high grass.  

The winds were strong but fortunately very consistently blowing into my face.  Years of elk hunting taught me to look through my binos at the grasses by the stag to make certain the wind was doing the same pattern down the ridge.  It was game on time.

I scanned the area below to figure out my path to the stag.  Between the heavy brush, lantana bushes, rocks and high grass it was going to take some effort to make a play on this stag....

 
Great story!!

The stag was roughly 300 yards away when I first spotted him.  During wind gusts I would move through any thick spots to keep down my noise.  I knew I would need to get down to a gully below and then get to the same level to have any type of a chance at this big guy. It took some time but managed to get to an open path to the bench where the stag and hind were feeding. Once I got there the grass was much more dense and high than anticipated.  I climbed up to the edge of the bench but the stag was gone.  I assumed a swirling wind had alerted him to my presence.  

Since I had quite a distance back to the truck before dark I started back up the path I had made on my initial stalk. As I got part way up the hillside I looked back to where I had just stalked and surprisingly the stag was actually still there!   With the high grass and some unknown contours I had been within 50 yards of him and had no idea he was still around.  Rookie mistake. I immediately headed back down on the same path and at this point the wind had died down.  I had to move painstakingly slow to move quietly through the high, thick grasses.

As I made my way towards him I had to climb up a bank and as I parted the grasses for a look, his massive 6x5 rack swung into view as we saw each other at the same time.  He was gone in a flash.  This stag would end up being the biggest stag I saw the entire trip and on the very first evening I almost had a shot at him.  Anticipation was high for the rest of the hunt.   Thrilling hunt so far but during the couple of mile walk back to the truck I was mentally kicking myself for messing up that first stalk by assuming he was gone.  These red deer's senses were much sharper than I expected and careless mistakes weren't going to cut it with them.

Here is the actual place where the stalk took place.  The stag was in the bright green grassy area near the left side of the picture. While it might not look like it, the grass is really high and could easily hide a 350 lb animal.  Add in a lot of hidden rocks and it was a tough place to stalk and especially quietly.

 

Every evening after our hunt we would head back to the cabin for dinner.  Our guide's friends and family would come to visit so normally there were 10-12 folks there every evening.  Apparently they wanted to hear the yankees talk?  Throw a Georgia boy in the mix and they were wondering if they needed a translator...

It was great to hear all the hunting stories and learn about the Australian culture.   I learned more from them in those few evenings than you will learn from any textbook.  My take away from our conversations was that the Australian country folks are some of the most down to earth and entertaining people you will ever meet.  Period.  The people made a great trip even better.

Day two started off with a stag roaring in the dark as I was getting my gear off the back of the truck.  I started off in that direction and after about a quarter of a mile walk it was getting daylight enough to glass.  Almost instantly I saw 3 hinds that were feeding on a ridge top.  Knowing that a stag had roared in tha vicinity I circled around the end of the ridge and began my climb to intercept them.  I heard another roar on the adjoining ridge and my binos revealed a separate herd was on the move. No time to go after them with the fact that I had a different stag somewhere right ahead of me.  As I approached the top and looked over into the backside of the ridge, I caught sight of the 4x4 and his 3 hinds. Unfortunately the cool morning area had the thermals heading down the hill and I was not going to be able to make a play on these deer.  They appeared to be heading to a saddle so I kept in the shadows and worked that direction.  As I got to the saddle apparently the deer had taken a different path as I never saw them again.

I continued out the shaded side of the ridge to prevent skylining myself.  Every once in awhile I would peek over the backside into the large meadow, which was the same one I had chased the large herd the first morning.  Unlike the previous day, the meadow was completed devoid of deer.  For the next few hours I eased along glassing and listening.  

At about 8:30 I was to the end of the ridge and came to a heavily wooded valley.  On this trip I was carrying an elk bugle tube and was roaring with just my own mouth.  After the second roar I made a stag fired right back in what sounded like that wooded area.  I roared again and he started to get really fired up with the longest, most drawn out roars I heard on the entire trip.  As he continued to talk I decided to get aggressive and close the distance. As I started down into the valley I realized he was over on the oppsite grassy hillside just past the woods. I tried to be as quiet as possible and worked by way to the bottom while staying hidden in the brush.  There was a gully that I needed to get to so that I could climb up and get on the same level with my quarry.  As soon as I stepped out of the brush to start up the gully, apparently the stag had closed the distance on me and was standing there looking at me at about 50 yards.  He barked twice, ran 20 yards before stopping again and then headed out of sight. My assumption was that he had heard me descending the hill and wanted to confront this intruder. Unfortunately I had messed up a chance on a good stag that was by himself with no hinds to mess up the hunt.

I proceeded to climb up the ridge and found that he had been busy making rubs and the entire area smelled almost like a rutting elk.  There were several beds and some of the best sign I have seen the entire trip.  I continued up the steep ridge and spent the oven hot midday hours sitting on a shaded point overlooking a huge valley.  This area provided a great spot to glass during the midday and await some evening action.



It was breezy throughout the day and I started to have issues with my contacts drying out. I kept using drops but they kept bothering me. More on this later.  By late afternoon I started on my way back towards the truck and when I glassed into a huge meadow there were 12 hinds literally bedded in the middle of a bunch of range cattle. I started to hear a roar and suddenly a big stag enters the meadow with another 5 hinds. They were headed right towards other bedded hinds so I figured my best play was to work around to a saddle and hope they headed there for water.  As soon as I got a few hundred yards here comes like 100 head of beef cattle running right towards all of my red deer.  Later I learned that the rancher had been fixing fences and spooked the entire herd.  I heard another stag roar but he never showed before dark. It had been a good day with 4 stags spotted and 29 hinds.

The other hunters had also seen a lot of deer and overall it was a pretty productive all day hunt.  

When we got back to camp I immediately removed my contact to relieve some of the irritation to my eye. Unfortunately removing the contact offered no relief. The eye was now very bloodshot and it was determined that I had gotten something in my eye causing an irritation. I put a mild saltwater solution hoping for some relief by morning.  However, the next morning it was worse and I could hardly open it due to the pain and swelling.  Half the way around the world on a dream hunt and a dreaded health issue surfaced. To make matters worse it was my right eye and nautrally I am right eye dominant.

I kept awakening throughout the night with my eye swelled shut but kept optimistic it would somehow improve by daylight. No such luck but I still went on a hunt in the morning because sitting around camp was not an option.  That morning I saw a stag and 2 hinds within the first 300 yards of the clinmb up a ridge. At one time they were headed right towards me but turned and headed out the sidehill away from my location.  I saw a few more hinds and then headed back to the truck by 9am.  

It was decided that I would go to the doctor once we got back to town.  The local family practitioner was a really nice guy and they took me right in without any delay.  The diagnosis was a corneal ulcer on the surface of my eye. A trip to the pharmacist to get eye drops and was told to go rest in a dark place to prevent light sensitivity.  

Since I could not hunt I told my brother in law he should go after that big 6x5 that I encountered the first evening. When he came back that evening he was full of stories because the big 6x5 had shown itself again in the same meadow and he almost got a shot at him.  The guide Wayne confirmed that he was about as nice of a stag as you will see in that area.

I slept the rest of the day and night but when I awoke to hunt the next morning my eye had worsened.  At this point I could not literally see my hand in front of my face.  In fact the only thing I could see was my dream hunt slipping by...

That morning I tagged along with my buddy from Georgia as his cameraman.   It was a great time as we headed out into some more remote country and were treated to seeing some roaring stags and spotted several hinds.  We set up at an awesome mountaintop waterhole and I did some calling.  A red deer came into investigate but stayed well above our location.

 

We heard roaring down the mountain and took off after him.  He was heading down through the valley and we picked up the pace to intercept him. It was easy to keep tabs on him with his roaring but we came to a roadblock in the form of a herd of range cattle.  One wrong move and they would take off in his direction.  We circled way around the cattle's location but never could get a chance to see him.



As you can see this area was much more rugged and mountainous than the previous sections we hunted on the ranch.  Certain sections of the ranch reminded you of terrain you might encounter when chasing elk and yet other areas were more gentle like the mountains near my home here in PA.

When we returned to camp I was getting a bit stir crazy not being able to hunt so I decided to see if I could retrain my brain to shoot right handed and left eye dominant. Nothing ventured nothing gained.  The first few shots weren't pretty as they typically hit a few feet to the left even at close range.  I stuck with it and after quite a few shots I realized that even though I could not see out of my right eye I had to keep it completely closed to make this new shooting system work.  By the way, it you have never tried to shoot with our non-dominant eye I suggest you give it  a try with a big backstop!

After some initial frustrations I started to adjust and was now shooting well out to 20 yards. It wasn't ideal because it took a lot of extra concentration but it sure beat the alternative of not hunting.  I lost about 10 yards of effective shooting range but at this point I was fine with that.

If you have never had a corneal ulcer here is an idea of what it looks like.  Yes, it does hurt as much as you think.  



Speaking of shooting I forgot to mention my red stag set up.  A friend that made this journey previously had an issue with customs and his leather selway quiver.  They confiscated it as they felt it was rawhide and not acceptable to enter the country.  Rather than take my usual Black Canyon recurve with leather grip and Thunderhorn quiver(I would be sick if either the bow or quiver were confiscated) I set up my Morrison Phoenix 15" ILF riser with 55 lb Black Max limbs.  With this set up and my 27" draw length I was shooting 53 lbs.  Coupled with a Gold Tip Hunter shaft, brass insert and a Grizzly single bevel for a total arrow weight of 540 grains.  This set up is virtually identical to my elk rig and with reds being 150 lbs lighter I was comfortable with my set up.

Glad you got to see some good aussie bush mate...