Was in a syndicate in the highlands a few years back with reds & sika, is was a 3000 acres of woodland.
Remember going in when the rut was on, parked up & could hear a stag up near the top of the wood.
It took about an hour to get to him crawling up ditches under branches crossing burns i got to within about 30m of him he had about a dozen hinds milling about & he was lying down in a small clearing looking right at me.
He finale started showing more intrest in the hinds and started moving about i sat & watched him for about 1/2 hour i could have shot him but there was no way i could get him out.
This was about 6 years back still rember it as it is one of the best stalkes that i have ever had.
Never got anything that day bit it is a day that i will not forget.
John
I was down in Devon a few years ago and had one of those days. I started by disturbing a stag on my way into the high seat. The high seat was against a large beech, one of a line on the edge of a wood, and the plan was that deer would come out of the wood into the turnips somewhere in the 100 yards ahead of me but after half an hour I heard a deer coming up the edge of the field behind me. I carefully looked round the large beech tree that the seat was tied to and just caught a glimpse of a stag moving from the field into the line of trees, probably the one that I had disturbed earlier. I looked the other side of my tree and took aim on the track just inside the wood expecting the stag to step out at any time. I eventually got tired and had to put the rifle down but kept looking back in case the stag came out however I figured that he had gone straight into the wood before I could turn round. Shortly after this I could hear a single hound working in the valley behind me and getting closer and it seemed likely that he was on the line of the stag. Before long he came past me, it was a single beagle and he had lost the line of the stag but carried on up the field and out of sight. Something made me look behind a few minutes later and there was the stag stood on the track briefly before running down into the wood before I could get the rifle round. That stag had stood in the line of trees, 40 odd yards behind me without moving for about 15 minutes and allowed the hound to pass within 20 yards before finally making a move.
I decided to move to another high seat further down into the wood as I could hear a stag roaring down there but as soon as I started to move I started to flush pheasants as the wood was stocked for shooting and had several thousand birds put down, I couldn't move more than a couple of paces without flushing a protesting cock pheasant. I went down past the high seat and although I knew that the deer were probably used to the disturbance it was making me uncomfortable and when I saw and spooked a spiker I retreated to the high seat and took up position. This high seat had three lines of fire, one directly ahead where the deer crossed a track on their way to the field, one at 45 degrees through a bit of a ride and another at 90 degrees down the line between the planted trees.
After a short wait I could hear a deer coming towards me but realised that it wasn't going to cross the track and started to look down the ride at 45 degrees. I saw a stag come to the edge of the ride and stop about 50 yards away, he was in heavy cover and I could see one antler that was showing 5 points. I had the rifle to my shoulder and waited for it to step out into the ride. Minutes passed and the stag hadn't moved but then suddenly shot across the gap and into heavy cover on the other side. I thought I was going to get one more chance as he passed me at 90 degrees but it did the same thing, paused before shooting across the gap and again I had no chance of a shot. He'd gone past me by now so I very very quietly got down from the high seat and started to follow him. I had just his backside occasionally in sight for another ten minutes, never saw his head, could never get a shot and he finally went into a patch of rhododendron and never came out, at least where I was watching. The stalker later told me that the stag had 6 points on the other side making it a good 11 pointer.
I had been out for about two hours, never had a shot at the two stags and a spiker that I'd seen and yet had had the most memorable morning out. It was topped by my mate who was in a high seat about a mile away and saw a cougar walking through the bracken. He thought he was seeing things but when we mentioned it to the farmer he said "oh yeah, we see it a couple of times each year" as if it was an every day thing.