You didn’t think the Patagonia adventure ended with my red stag did you? Oh no, that was just day one!

While day one ended with celebratory Argentine wine and a toast, day two started brisk and bright and early atop a new hillside, close to where we had been the previous morning. The second we got out of the truck to begin our hike, we heard the unmistakable roar of red stag – and not just one. Off we went to get set up. We huddled next to some sort of large tree (I have no idea what kind, but it was prickly… Like most plants we encountered down there), and began to glass area as the sun rose. We were right on the edge of of a fence, and the property next to us was apparently no go zone, so we weren’t allowed to cross at all. As the sun began to rise, I could make out a large {something] moving on a hillside out in front of us, in the general direction of the stag’s roar.

As luck would have it, it was on the other side of the fence that we spotted stag.

Well hello, you big noisy fellow! Not that it would have mattered too much, as they were so 1500 – 1800 yards away. Still, such big animals can put on quite a show even at such a great distance. One bull and five cows, and we were fully entertained for more than an hour. He would roar and holler and grunt and chase them around while they were trying to graze, getting extra flustered when no one would pay him any attention. Thankfully, the great distance between us allowed for me to pull out my camera and take some photos! They’re the tiny dots in the light grass in the middle of the first photo below.

After a while, they meandered out of sight on the other side of a hill, only to emerge at the very top of it, giving me an even better shot with the camera.

That was the extent of the excitement for our morning (and I’ll take that any day!).

That is, until we were almost back at the truck. Dad, Christian, and I had stopped for a minute just to look around, when all of a sudden Christine and I heard a stag roar not 300 yards from us. Our eyes widened and we nodded at each other, he tapped to my dad (who was looking through his binocs in another direction and didn’t hear a thing) on the shoulder, then turned and took off. Remember that “gaucho turbo” I was telling you about? Well, this was our first taste of it. Not full throttle, but close.

Christian took off so fast up this hill that he was taking three or four steps for every one my dad and I attempted. I was essentially running (as well as I could on a sandy, rocky incline), becoming more winded than I would care to admit, and this kid is acting like an Olympic sprinter going to check the mailbox – he’s hurrying, of course, but is by no means running like we are, much less losing an astonishing amount of oxygen with each breath. A few minutes later, we were at the top of the ridge, Dad and I with our hands on our knees huffing and puffing and Christian is acting like he just strolled to the kitchen to make a sandwich. Oh, and that stag? No sign of him. He likely heard dad and I going into cardiac arrest panting up the hill and took off.  Wary creatures, I tell you. Wary creatures.

In fact, from our little blind in a clump of bushes that evening, we actually didn’t see anything. Not necessarily as a result of anything we did, of course. These free-range red stag can be awfully tricky beasts. Never fear – we were not discouraged. How could we be, with all of the excitement we’d already had?!

Day 3 started off even chillier than the morning before, and that boded well for hunting (or so we thought). Walking across the hillside field to the rocks we would climb to reach our “blind,” we actually jumped 2 stag. I could hear their movement, but never saw them. We waited a few more minutes before continuing, then began our climb up the mountain.

We could hear them all around us as the sun rose (yet another epic sunrise… duh), but nothing ever came back into our field of view. As the morning’s hunt came to a slow close, we got up and hiked over the flat, rocky top of the ridge a few hundred yards to check the back side of the mountain. Nothin’ but moo cows to see (as opposed to stag cows, of course).

Moo cows and lots and lots of land.

Day 3’s afternoon hunt proved equally as uneventful, except the young stag my dad happened to glimpse as we were hiking our way out. We were making our way across a precariously steep hill when he frantically suddenly whispered, “STAG! STAG!” much to my surprise and delight. The 3 of us crouched down and pulled up our binocs, getting a nice view of a 6 x 6 bull about 180 yards below us. Dad readied himself to potentially take a shot, but Christian informed me, through our broken language and somehow was coherent to the two of us, that this stag was too young to take. I equate it to seeing a nice 8 point buck here in South Carolina, but knowing he’s likely only about 2.5 years old and will definitely be a nice shooter next year. Let ’em go so they can grow, right? Plus, it was nearly dark and I am not sure how we’d have made it down that hill in the dark, then back up with a caped stag!

I actually just remembered another unusual thing that happened that evening on our way out – I stumbled across a knife. Like a kitchen butcher’s knife. My mind, naturally, went to “serial killers in the Andes,” but when I picked it up, Christian’s eyes widened with excitement. He informed me that he dropped that knife on this same hillside TWO YEARS AGO and never found it. Hah! Looks like it was a success after all.

Oh, another thing I almost forgot? When we dropped Charlie off to head to his hunting spot, guess what I spotted in the bushes right beside the truck? That bad boy on the right!

I know! My biggest shed ever. And I only had to fly to Patagonia to find it! It is a decent-sized 6 point, and was way to big to fit in my suitcase (you know I tried, come on). Denton found the one in my left hand, but was kind enough to donate it to the “Hollis’s Shed Addiction Fund.” Both will [hopefully] be making their way to the US with my European mount in a few months!

Yowzers. How’s all that for 3 days of hunting?? Sunday, Monday, & Tuesday were officially over, and we were worn out in the best way. Three full days of wake – hunt – eat – sleep – hunt – eat – sleep, and only 4 more to go.

Just. You. Wait.