shooting stags in rut?

sikastag1

Member
can all you experts who no doubt have a reasonable answer,please tell me why master stags are shot during the rut??
surely the stag is the master stag because he is holding hinds and seeing off all competition,so why shoot an animal that is clearly the best animal to pass on genes?
i honestly cant see the point,you loose the dominant stag and no doubt upset the hinds and thus upset the rut?
 
because it's a nice trophy and fetches a great income to the estate! simple as.

however, there are/can be other reasons. I have on many occassions shot the 'master' stag holding up to 20 hinds, simply because they have been in poor shape, going back, or very old - where essentially a younger less 'grand' beast may actually be better swooping in and taking the position to pass on younger healthier genes.
 
Thats why I don't shoot the master stag. We try to complete our stag cull before the rut kicks off so the stags can rut in peace. Commercial deer managers may do things differently when they have clients who want trophies. That being said, in a well managed population there will always be a couple of trophies that feature in a cull. As long as its not overdone, i do not see a problem.
 
can all you experts who no doubt have a reasonable answer,please tell me why master stags are shot during the rut??
surely the stag is the master stag because he is holding hinds and seeing off all competition,so why shoot an animal that is clearly the best animal to pass on genes?
i honestly cant see the point,you loose the dominant stag and no doubt upset the hinds and thus upset the rut?

You firstly need to understand a bit about genetics!

The DNA the stag passes on is exactly the same whether he is a year old having recovered from a bad foot and has a crap head as when he gets to the prime of his life and grows a big head a few years later.

I strongly suspect that most stags have the genetic potential to grow a good head and other environmental and social factors govern what you see.
 
They taste crap they smell are completely covered in parasites over the rut why would any one shoot them during this period. Also if a stag can hold a group of hinds and has no deformities he should be left its natures way.
 
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You firstly need to understand a bit about genetics!

The DNA the stag passes on is exactly the same whether he is a year old having recovered from a bad foot and has a crap head as when he gets to the prime of his life and grows a big head a few years later.

I strongly suspect that most stags have the genetic potential to grow a good head and other environmental and social factors govern what you see.

I agree, most folk while carrying out a sporting cull will leave the best stags whether holding hinds or not.

When I started working, we didn't shoot stags in the rut. we finished with guests at the end of sept and then would only soot really poor stuff ourselfs, leaving the deer in peace. We then would give the deer time to settle and would start shooting at the start of Nov.

Thinking back it was a nice idea but we were holding too many deer.

As said venison quality is horrendous but fine for the Continental market!

Many Hind forests won't see a stag until the rut, so it's there only chance for a stag.

Despite the smelly brutes, it's my favourite time of the year!

Incidently, both my sons are born late May?????
 
he should be left its natures way.

But in doing what we do, whether it be to young stags, hinds or the trophies nothing is 'natures way'. Yes they smell, but for arguments sake, on my ground I won't see any stags all year apart from during and shortly after the rut, am I supposed to not remove any stags at all?
 
a lot of places only have transient stag populations (as above)

That said a sensible cull policy should allow the prime "trophy" stags to rut before they are shot necessitating a late-rut cull.
no point shooting all the big ones that come into a piece of ground before they have done their work.

not all condition indicators are genetic though.
It has a lot to do with it but environmental factors have as much to do with the condition of the herd as genetics
 
The question you should be asking is why people shoot good Stags and Bucks before the rut.......
 
Stags shot by clients are normally mature stags so will have had several years of leaving his genes, there are traditional rutting corries, where hinds gather the mature stags in good condition will be first to start rutting and make their way to the same corries year on year, so there is a very good chance that a hind has been lined by the same stag several years running.


A stag even one in prime condition will not hold his harem for the whole of the rut a good stag may start of with as many as thirty hinds , but that number will be eroded as the rut progresses, hinds being pinched from him by opportunist stags, but the fact of being constantly on the move ,sleeping very little if at all not eating all take there toll, even a stag in his prime will only last so long maybe three weeks absolute max before he is driven off where upon he will probably head of to the wintering ground to recover.

Much is made of good stags, but a good stag is only half the the story, you need a equally good hind, much harder to identify to produce a good youngster, why do people think its all down to the stag.

Early in the rut as I said its mature stags in their prime that hold the most hinds , this is not always the stag with the biggest head, so I would suggest from that there is more to being a good stag than just the size of his head.

In fact I would say that the food available has more to do with head a stag has than any other factor, there have been plenty instances in the past when park deer have been released with the intention of improving the quality
of Highland deer, has it worked not really in fact in a few years your park stag will have degenerated and probably carry no better a head than many of the resident deer.

Red hinds unlike Roe which tend to only come into oestrus once will usually come in again twenty one days later
by that time most of the big stags have finished so hinds that were missed the first time will almost invariably be mated by young stags.

When you take all the above into consideration I believe you are doing no great harm by shooting mature stags in the rut.
 
Red hinds unlike Roe which tend to only come into oestrus once will usually come in again twenty one days later
by that time most of the big stags have finished so hinds that were missed the first time will almost invariably be mated by young stags.

This is something that interests me. I have some sika stalking here in Ireland and had noticed that the stags vanish after the rut, say in early November depending on the year. For a while there are only hinds and then, as if by magic, some smaller stags appear sometimes as late as February, actually on this ground they mostly seem to appear around about February.

Then I started noticing that most years I would see a calf in October or November that was clearly very young which is to say only a few weeks old. I have seen these calves survive the winter as initially I had assumed they had no chance.

Now, I can't 100% connect these two things up but what I'm given to suspect is that on some ground holding sika smaller stags will tour around up to several months after the main rut looking to cover hinds. This rather odd activity appears to be part of their normal pattern of behaviour. On the particular bit of ground I have in mind they often don't appear until February and they seem to sort of "hold" hinds. The following photo was taken about the end of January or February from what I remember and this wee stag didn't appear on this ground until this time - I'd never seen him before.

smallstagandhinds.jpg
 
I tend to agree with most of what Bogtrotter has said and the others who know that many commercial estates rely on trophy stalking to survive. To me Stags are at their easiest to stalk in the rut as their mind is on other matters. I would never shoot a stag myself in the rut for the simple reason that the meat stinks and I eat or give away all I shoot. I have long held the view that the main reason the general public say venison is too strong for their taste is because they have never been offered meat from a three year old stag shot in August. I think it is without equal.
 
I agree with bogs comments even though I'm by a long shot no way as experienced or knowledgable. I think focusing on the 'right' master stags during the rut is key - ie. if you're going to shoot a trophy deer, either for yourself or for a client / ie estate income, pick the right one. in fact, my biggest grandest trophy was a master stag that was going back and was in really bad condition, an old stag that really needed to be culled, and I am very pleased with the job. I also have a very large stag that was a master stag and was in phenomenal condition, and I really should not have shot it, but it was my only chance of a stag across 3 days in violent wind and rain on the last weekend of the season - it was going to be my stag! LOL...ok, not 'proud' of it from a 'management' perspective, but I'm sure that one trophy stag has not done a great deal of harm on such a large ground...however, it should by no means be common practice.
 
thought it would get a few different answers! seems trophy and money are the main reasons for shooting a master red in the rut?

some very interesting comments and views though,just annoys me that we have a very fragile red population and still money is the key factor??

still,when there gone there gone,as the saying goes?!
 
I'm not sure our red population is 'that' fragile tbh, only in a couple of hard hit areas where pure commercialism takes precedence (forestry operations).

I believe there is a significant amount of land at least in Scotland with very healthy and well managed red deer populations, where taking a master stag for a good trophy fee income does not do damage to the population. I for one, have no issues taking master stags, as long as they are either a good cull animal from a health/age/etc. perspective or it's just a single one for the wall.

shooting a rutting stag can be very exciting, and should imho not be a 'faux pas', as long as it's done right and in moderation, then it can be enjoyed as part of the stag season.

more emphasis should probably be put on culling the right hinds!

thought it would get a few different answers! seems trophy and money are the main reasons for shooting a master red in the rut?

some very interesting comments and views though,just annoys me that we have a very fragile red population and still money is the key factor??

still,when there gone there gone,as the saying goes?!
 
are we forgetting that recreational deer stalking is not the same as deer management which means something entirely different to deer control.

It not as easy as one man's idea fits all.

I'll be honest and blunt, if it's a big stag then it's more than likely done it's bit and culling it to encourage a reduction in similar genetic progeny is a good thing. Don't knock a guy who's earning depend a good beast for the guest and don't knock a contractor or controller who has to reduce a population or someone else will replace them to do it.

If you can recreationally cull deer then that's great and you can make up your own rules and ideals as you go along but that's not the way the world works for the guys who cull the vast majority of deer in the UK
 
Its a job to find a MATURE CULL STAG in some parts of the highlands now. The age of most stags shot by clients is now down to as low as four year old. :eek:
 
You book years in advance to shoot an Imperial and above in the rut. The experience of an entire Glen echoing to the roar in the first weeks of October are what the fathers of our sport wrote about. The thrill of the hunt. Go out and bag the biggest etc.

Stan
 
In our smallish fenced area at home we have red sika and fallow
the red stag we had until two years ago was a huge 27 point (master stag) we also had two much younger lesser stags
the large stag commanded all the hinds (15) during the rut with the young stags not getting a look in
last year the hinds produced 1 calf
after removing old (master stag) before last years rut the same hinds produced 12 calfs
So maybe in some cases the biggest is not always the best ?
regards andy
 
very well documented example:tiphat:

In our smallish fenced area at home we have red sika and fallow
the red stag we had until two years ago was a huge 27 point (master stag) we also had two much younger lesser stags
the large stag commanded all the hinds (15) during the rut with the young stags not getting a look in
last year the hinds produced 1 calf
after removing old (master stag) before last years rut the same hinds produced 12 calfs
So maybe in some cases the biggest is not always the best ?
regards andy
 
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