This is the stag that we shot on the farm back in April. Red deer are an introduced species in NZ and they can cause a lot of damage to native flora and farm crops and new grass, if their numbers aren’t controlled.
We don’t do any ‘mass killing’ here. The deer are far too smart for that anyway! But when we need meat for the freezer we will go out for a hunt. If we have lots of deer then we occasionally invite friends to the farm, so they can fill their freezers too. Nothing goes to waste, even the working dogs get in on the feast!
This was a particularly impressive boy and we respect what a beautiful animal he was. Nathan has cleaned up the skull and bleached it and he will be mounted on a wall so we can continue to admire him. We had the meat turned into salamis, beer sticks, venison bacon and sausages and it is first class and is still feeding our family, months later.
This boy also features in an upcoming article that we wrote for Rod and Rifle