On my HF 600 acre block we mainly hunt for fallow but as it shares a fence with the deer farm we inevitably get red stags looking for greener pastures. If they do it enough times we just concede that they're serial jumpers and let them wild up and live the rest of their days in the bush block or until someone wants to hunt them.

Here are some of the stags from this years late velvet. My personal favourite although not the biggest was the overspread fella, was really tempted to bow hunt him but ended up tying my personal hunting budget up with my hog deer hunt.

I've also put a shot in of the elusive billy goat. He was captured in the wild some years ago and released here. We want him to hit 40" spread before we let a client take him, in April this year I estimated him at 37".

There are a few more big boys but they tend to be shy of getting within photo range, must be self conscious of people just staring at their head gear!

Apologies but the files are too big so you'll have to follow this link, there are some pretty deer so it's worth a look!

http://1drv.ms/1BiURZJ


Enjoy,

JP

Jack,

Neat photos...thanks for sharing

Well yea, nice pics. I really liked pic 14 the stag looking at you.

I just saw the location ,a little far out...........

Those are some great Red Stag, I like the same one you do, Jack when will you be starting at Water Valley?

NSMike - I've taken a step back from guiding a bit this year in favour of some other personal pursuits so I let that slide a bit. I've decided what I was doing wasn't for me so as of next year I'll look at building up my guiding again in a bigger way. I'll let you know.

I didn't know that y'all grow them up that big in Aussie, too. I always thought of NZ as the red stag and fallow place, and Aussie as the water buffalo, axis, and maybe sambhar place.

Cool, regardless. What part of Australia is this? And how far from Melbourne?

I always get that, I really think Australia is underrated in terms of its big game hunting. The NZ game park reds certainly do have us, our game park fallow I'd still say are on par or better quite often (some of our wild fallow are as good too) but it's our wild deer that get the kiwis. Most wild reds and fallow in NZ are for a lack of a better word, rubbish. We've got great wild genetics, we don't have the number of wild reds NZ has but we've got a great fallow population.

In Australia what's considered by other aussies to be our premier game animal is the Sambar, that's just because there are lots of them and most of it is on public land. I'd go reds and fallow any day. We also have a good population of Rusa and Australia for many years has been the only place in the world with a free ranging population of hog deer that can be hunted. Then of course we do have chital up north as well as well as buffalo, banteng, pigs, goats and scrub bulls.

I live about 3 1/2 hours from Melbourne and the property is another 2 1/2 hours further past me. It's closer to Adelaide in South Australia (only 4-5 hours).

Jack your distances have me a little confused Melbourne to Adelaide is about 8 hours, Keith is about 5 1/2 are you turning off the A8 and heading towards the coast at some point because your saying Adelaide is about 4-5 hours.

Adelaide! That's where Pakistan played someone in this last ICC WCC. Only JP will get this I think

Cool! Now I have more incentive to visit my cousin in Melbourne

Only thing is yall don't have Glocks, Sigs, or black guns! Lol

Most Australians don't know Keith so it's very impressive for an American to know it, got family in Keith actually. It is close to the coast in SA. To get there from Melbourne you'd follow the A8 to Horsham (my hometown) and then turn off on to the Wimmera Highway and go that way. Coming from Adelaide you follow the M1/A1 to Tailem Bend then turn right on to Princes Highway. Just to keep it interesting there is a time difference between the two states as well.

There you go Chital, the first American I've spoken to that knows the game of cricket! It was good of the other teams to show up this year for us to play!
I know, i know, when I eventually get to the states I'm making it my mission to fire a pistol at least once.

Cricket is life!! Well not really, but it's number 3 after hunting and jiu-jitsu, so yeah. That's really high.
I have Pakistani parents and my dad's friends are all super cricket fans. When the World Cup rolled around, and Pakistan was playing India, we got invited. Gotta love 3-5 am nights here watching all 50 overs. Lol.

I know that's off topic, but I doubt you care lol. Cricket!!!!

(Sad to see Michael Clarke leave, loved Mitchell Starc, and what a game against NZ!! Too bad Pakistan lost though. Team is good but too much politics in Paki cricket.)

Thanks Jack I've worked out that you must be somewhere near Conmurra. I think describing it as about 1/3rd of the distance east between Kingston Se and Mt Gambier on the Princes highway (B1) would help people find it on a map. I'm a bit of a geography geek, I familiarized myself with that area a bit, while working out where Water Valley is. I know about the half hour offset which perplexes me a bit.

JP, how difficult is it getting your hunting rifles in and out of the country? Ditto about trophies.

Ah now it all makes sense, well that is showing some dedication right there! If I do recall correctly you guys didn't go so bad but Kohli hit that ton and a couple of others did pretty well which was always going to make it hard. Clarke has been great but down in Australia we've just been waiting for him to call it quits for a while now. Starc was just amazing tow watch this year as was Steve Smith (his recent test form has been great).
Don't tell any aussies but I was really barracking for NZ this year, Australia has won it enough and they've been more consistent the last couple of years. I work with a fella from Bangladesh and he's always feeding me their news so I couldn't help but get a soft spot for them.

Yeh NSMike, around there pretty much. Were you guiding on WV or working as a farmhand?

John - To be honest I haven't had any hunters come in from the states so I haven't looked into that yet. I can always offer up one of my rifles (Sako 85 Bavarian 300WM, Remington 700 .270, Blaser R8 6.5x55 or 7mmRM, Sako 85 Black Bear 9.3x62) and ammo for use free of charge.

I have imported my own trophies from NZ, in actual fact I'm just going through the process of getting my tahr from my last DIY hunt there back at the moment. My experience so far has been that the importing country is the one with most restrictions and not the one you're leaving, so it'd be your US customs that would be the ones you'd have to keep happy. It does tend to be quite a lot easier if the skins are tanned in the country they are shot before being shipped back.

Jack I've never been there, but came across some information on Tom Brinkhouse and Water Valley, it intrigued me so I read up as much as I could. I'm good at maps and online research. My number one item, on my bucket list, for foreign travel is Australia. I did have an Oz ex-patriot as a client until he moved back.

Jack the guy behind this site http://trophydeerhuntaustralia.webs.com/ is a taxidermist based in Taz, that outfits at Water valley, he could probably clue you in. The biggest thing is using a taxidermist licensed to import. I bet an inquiry in the Taxidermy Forum would provide answers.

It is certainly a beautiful place once you get away from the cities, I'm a real environmental buff so I get kicks out of nature and the environment. The millions of years of isolation has given us some pretty neat animals too, not to mention the deer! Our tourism could be given a huge boost if Australia promoted the game we have, there are plenty of Aussie hunters that couldn't tell you all the deer species we have here. Having said all that, in my experience the average kiwi is better than an Aussie, they're top people and I'd recommend putting that on the list to visit too. It might lose me business until I get my NZ side of guiding up and running but if you're happy to put in the hard yards NZ has some breathtaking scenery and game to chase.

Thank you for the tip re. importing skins too!