We have had a really cold snap of weather in the past 8 or so days and its got many of the Stags rutting or at least given them a kick along
I don’t think that more than 30 minutes would have passed without one calling out like a little donkey Braying.
I crawled into some Grass on the spring side of a patch of black wattle about 50m from the deer and took out my Binoculars to have a closer look.
There were quite a few of them more than 20 at a guess with some smaller stags nothing to amazing in the antler department. As I watched an old stag His antlers broken and rubbed white wandered towards them and was almost immediately challenged and turned out of the timber by a youngStag then another joined in and pushed him out a little further. I watched as he tried twice more to join the group with the same result.
It was a bit sad to watch he was out gunned by the young blokes even though they were smaller antlered and immature I think he was just to old to hold it against them any more and after they pushed him around for about half an hour
He came over to the next closest patch of black wattle for a breather and lay down about 14 yards in front of me.
I took the shot at him laying down and got penetration up the feathers , he jumped up and ran like a greyhound back behind me about
60 yards then did a big flip and that was it , while I was laying there one of the younger fellas from the group must have seen all this and
Came over for a closer look , I took this photo from about 10 yards , he was looking at me for about 5 mins before he decided
I was no good and cut for it, it made for some great photos.