Rigby adventurer Chris Rogers, a deer manager on the 10,500-acre Euston Estate in Suffolk, England recounts his recent experience of hunting a mature red stag in the Scottish Highlands. Carrying his Rigby Highland Stalker rifle, Chris reflects on the unique challenges and rewards of stalking in such rugged terrain.
The UK is blessed with six species of deer to stalk and with the various seasons there is something to harvest all year round, from the small, but tasty, muntjac to the UK’s largest land mammal, the red deer. Where I work in the flat lands of the East of England, which is a positively dizzying 12m above sea level, we have five of the six species to hunt, and our lowland red are some of the biggest in the country. This is mainly due to good genetics, access to fantastic agricultural land, broad leafed woodland and a kind climate. From the middle of September to the middle of October, temperature allowing, our red rut is an amazing experience with the stags roaring echoing around our ancient woodland like the soundtrack from Jurassic Park. However, if you want to experience the ultimate days hunting for red stags rather than just culling a big set of antlers, the Scottish Highlands is the place to go. Nowhere in the UK is truly wild anymore, but the Highlands are as close as you can get to experiencing wilderness type hunting here. For many, a trip for a Scottish stag in the Highlands is an annual pilgrimage and having missed out in 2023, I was lucky enough to be invited up by a friend to join him for a couple of days on an estate I used to organise a week of stalking on for my clients from down South.
As I have to be back for my own red stag rut, we headed up in early September and while the weather in the mountains can change from one hour to the next, we were greeted with blue skies and sun. As my friend Daniel had organised the trip, I insisted he shoot first and we had a great day spying a few groups of stags at a distance before closing in on the chosen group where he managed to take a fine stag at 200m with his Blaser .308.
The first day was a great reminder of how different the terrain is compared to home and also how a good level of fitness walking on the flat, sandy soil of the Breckland soon leaves you when you are required to hike up and down steep mountain slopes. It also doesn’t help when our stalking guide, Andy is an ex-Royal Marine who did his full military career with them before “retiring” up to the Highlands. After an evening of carb loading and whisky sampling, the alarm went off at the very respectable time of 7.30am and we met Andy and his ghillie, Fletcher at the estate larder at 9am. Most hunting rifles in the UK are fitted with sound moderators, but when I pulled the blue and tan gun slip out of the truck, the team instantly started on the friendly banter sportsmen are so good at. “Oh, you’ve bought the Rigby then, that’s the loud rifle, isn’t it?” Andy remarked, as he had experienced it’s roar several times before. I’ve had the Rigby Highland Stalker since the model was launched in 2017, and as the name suggests, the Highlands are very much an inspiration for the rifle. As such, I always try and use it for at least one day when I get to hunt in Scotland. Usually, a zero check would be undertaken before heading out, but the team were happy that I was confident in its zero and we headed out in the Land Rover up the glen road to spy for deer feeding high on the top of the hills.
The weather had turned slightly compared to the previous day but there was still blue sky and occasional sun to be seen in between the clouds. We hadn’t seen much from the glen road which wasn’t too much of an issue, as Andy expected to find deer high up out of sight, so we headed up an Argo track to reach the starting point for the stalk. Like deer on my own ground the team have a good idea of where deer are going to be hanging out depending on the weather and wind conditions, so we headed up towards a big bowl that offered shelter from the wind. As we came to each rise in the ground, we crawled up and spied into the area to ensure we didn’t bump anything as we went. We spotted and skirted round a young stag with a hind and calf before reaching a point where we could look in the whole bowl. We picked up a group of 20 hinds and calves which had a few young stags with them, but there was nothing that clearly fitted the cull criteria. We traced our route back down before traversing the hill towards a corrie where Andy was sure we’d find some more suitable stags.
Sure enough, after a hike round the hill we started to spot deer on the far hillside, and we needed to take care as we carried on round, as the eyesight of the mountain deer is extremely sharp. Making it into a large dip in the ground, we left my friend and the ghillie out of sight as Andy and I stalked down into some peat hags and then down into a steep-sided burn which would give us cover to head back up the hill towards the deer. Constantly checking behind as we went, in case we would be spotted by deer on the slope that was coming into view from behind, as we continued up out of the burn, out of sight of the targeted deer.
Feeling quite smug that I had kept up fairly well with the ex-Marine, it was at this point that Andy stepped it up several gears. We had a large grassy, heathery and rocky outcrop to scale where we hoped we would have suitable shooting position from at the top. The usual routine of being a few steps behind turned into 10 steps behind, then 20 and 30, before he had disappeared out of sight. There was no way I could keep up or catch up, so I slowly picked my way up the steep slope stopping occasionally to catch my breath and vent hot air, as by this point, the sun had come out making the assent extremely hot. Eventually reaching Andy who was already looking at the deer I crawled up into position with the Rigby. Despite not having a bipod attachment on the rifle, I’ve never really found the need for one; if carrying a pack, you can lay the rifle across that or usually in the Highlands you can find a knoll to position the rifle on. However, on this occasion I needed a little more elevation, so I took my binoculars from my harness and laid the rifle forend over the body of the binos.
The deer were some 220m in front of us and were grazing in a relaxed manner. They totalled some 15 hinds and calves, three young stags and two older stags, one mature beast with a 10-point head and the other which also had 10 antler points but looked a few years older. Its antlers looked as though they were starting to go back, a term used in the UK to describe when a deer’s antlers reduce in size due to old age. The antlers also had some remnants of velvet on them which in a Highland environment can be a sign of old age and a lack of enthusiasm for breeding, therefore the velvet is not cleaned from the antlers as quickly as younger animals will do. After a few minutes of deliberating, or possibly Andy allowing me to catch my breath, he confirmed the older stag was the one to take. Knowing the distance and drop of the .275 which was shooting a 150-grain copper bullet, I aimed two thirds up its body and just behind its shoulder as it was slightly turned away. The soft bang of the Rigby rang out and the beast jumped forwards before staggering a few paces and keeling over with one of its antlers jammed in the ground. “As unmoderated rounds go, it’s actually a very pleasant bang,” Andy remarked. One of the interesting things about unmoderated vs. moderated rifle shots in the UK now is that the deer are so used to the latter, that the current generation of deer have little knowledge of the danger presented from an unmoderated rifle. The remaining deer, although alert didn’t appear overly spooked, and they were still unaware of the danger as we rose from our firing point and made towards the downed stag. The remaining deer soon realised the danger and escaped through a cutting in the hill. On reaching the stag, my stalkers views on the deer’s age and antlers were confirmed, and after the usual pictures the beast was gralloched showing the bullet had cut the heart in two.
We carefully dragged the beast down off the high ground to an area where it could be extracted more easily with the Argo. Before we headed down to the glen road and the larder we sat as a group and ate our lunch, or ‘piece’ as the Scots call it. The weather had been kind to us and the estate had produced two memorable days for my friend and I. The rifle had performed perfectly as ever and there is something special about using a Rigby in the Highlands, which, along with Africa has got to be one of the spiritual homes for the brand.
