The Scottish Highlands-The Land of William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, and Red Stags

[lil 2 sleepy]

Red deer, the monarch of the Glenn, is truly a magnificent animal. They are the epidemy of the classical deer species. They are in more places than any deer, cost less to chase, provide multiple opportunities on a trip, and when in the “Roar” sound like a pride of lions fighting. What’s not to love? I learned 3-4 years ago hunting them in Argentina that I couldn’t help but fall in love with hunting them. After doing some research on Europe hunting, I realized that the best bang for your preverbal buck would be somewhere in the UK. Why not knock off two bucket list items by hunting them in their natural range and get to hunt the Highlands of Scotland as a bonus?

These stags wouldn’t be the New Zealand monsters, they’d be smaller free range “Hill” Stags, but after checking the price on them it was a no brainer. It’s the experience more so than the trophy anyway so I said what’s not to like let’s make this happen.

The planning wasn’t particularly difficult. I identified a broker that handled some very reasonable hunts and had some fantastic references. I also have a friend who is in the US Air Force and lives just outside of London. It works out that he could give me an idea of what to expect in the UK and we could add a few days in England to stop in to see some of the sites with my buddy, before taking a sleeper train to Inverness Scotland.

London is a pretty cool place to see some of the sights and sounds of England. I really did enjoy getting to see a few of the places you have long read about and have been in so many books. The highlights were probably The Tower of London and Windsor Castle. The tower has so much steeped history from William the Conqueror to the Two Princes being murdered to Walter Raleigh planting cabbage to apparently there being a polar bear housed there. It makes you realize all this took place 300 years before America was a country.

Windsor Castle sort of puts into perspective how rich these Royal people are. I mean they’re talking about how much Trumps Maralago is worth, but I can’t imagine you could rebuild Windsor with all the history and stuff for less than a cool couple Billion or Ten. This thing even had built in arrow shooting windows to ward off invaders or peasants or someone’s wife. It’s pretty dang sporty digs for fellas with bad teeth.

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After seeing every inch of London, or all we needed, it was off to Scotland on the overnight sleeper train. This sounded like a great idea, to ride up on the train overnight in a sleeper coach, solve a murder like Hercules Poirot and wake up fresh for the next day in Scotland. Well, the romantic ideas of a sleeper train are bullshit. It’s loud, rough, small as shit in my tiny bunk bed, and there wasn’t a single mystery to solve, other than who the fuck does this twice? Didn’t take long to solve that one. In any event, it was an experience, and we got a picture I guess, and Covid, I got what was in hindsight probably the King’s Covid, that was great too.

We went and picked up the rental car in Inverness to begin our Scottish part of the journey. I guess hoping out onto the highway on the left-hand side wasn’t interesting enough, so Enterprise decided to add another layer of difficulty and gave us a manual transmission. This normally would not be a big deal at all, as my first 15 years of trucks/cars were all sticks, but this one meant shifting with your left hand on the wrong side of the road. It just increased the difficulty from fair to above average pucker factor when you have to down shift quickly or go reverse to first while trying to remember not turning right on red.

First stop on the Scottish wrong side of the road tour, was Culloden Battlefield. It’s a very historic site of the last battle of Jacobite uprising for independence in 1746. I watched Outlander, so I had a little background, but it was interesting to see some of the lines of battle, the mass graves and a house that has been there since the battle took place and was part of the shelling.

It’s a really important spot to the Scots. They are super proud of a war they lost, and pretty much give the English the middle finger. I think I missed a chance to wear a 1776 shirt, I might have made Scottish friends.



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[lil 2 sleepy]

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We spent the next hour or two driving on one lane roads to get to our hotel. The Inch was going to be our home for the next 4-5 days, and it had that old world feel. The view was amazing, overlooking Loch Ness, the parlor and bar reeked of old-world drip like a Sherlock Holmes novel and the restaurant was surprisingly good and very proper. It even came with an overly enthusiastic butler. I have no idea what his real name was, but I nicknamed Mr. Deeds for the week, because he was very sneaky and was seemingly around every corner.

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By this point, we were into Wednesday, and it was not a hunt day for me. The wife and I spent the day checking out a few things in the area and I was still shaking off the King’s version of Covid. Fort Urquhart was a pretty interesting and beautiful spot-on Loch Ness. Long before Nessy was a thing, this fort was a significant point of focus for the entire area. The British and the Scots fought for and exchanged ownership of the fort for 400 years until Culloden fell and the English destroyed what was left of it. Once again, its hard to explain being in a building that is older than the European history of the good but not so Ole USA.

We next spent a little time cruising the Loch looking for Nessy. I don’t believe there is a giant dinosaur like creature roaming the lake, but they brought up a good point that due to the depths of the waters and the darkness, only 1% of the loch has been explored by anything other than sonar. It makes you think what actually could be under our boats that we don’t know about. Who knows may be Nessy is real and just waiting for the right person to eat.

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[BigBrother]

Spain is on my three year plan. Whatever I can hunt which is plenty.

Scotland would be pretty cool too.

Funny shit on the train. I laughed out loud.

[lil 2 sleepy]

Thursday was my first hunt day, and by now I’m beyond ready to roll. UK Covid symptoms are gone and I’m ready to hear some stags roar.

They don’t get moving too early looking for Stag. We got picked up at our hotel around 9am by our Gillie, named Jaime. A Gillie is the guides helper, tracker, skinner, driver, spotter, or basically the guides’ helper who is essential in the operation. We took the quick drive over to the property and met our guide Matthew I figured Mathew to be 22-23 and Jaime to be around 20-21, but later found out Matthew was 19 and Jaime had just turned 17. Both were already on a full career path hundreds of miles away from home, with real adult responsibilities. Both of these young men are exactly what I wish I could hire an army of. We don’t get the work ethic, determination and drive here in the USA. These chaps have “It”.

Hunting in Scotland is a lot different than hunting stags in Argentina. In Argentina you hunt thick bush like in south Texas. Scotland on the other hand is vast open highland hills. You spend a large portion of your mornings spotting stags that you would like to make a play on and develop a plan A, B, C & D. We were able to get a few nice stags in our sights and set out after a few. I immediately realized that I totally underestimated the conditions we would be hunting in. I knew Scotland was known for poor weather, but I was surprised how wet everything was. The bottom of the hills had water, the tops of the hills had water, there was 3” of water running down the hills. The rocks had springs in them, the fish in the lakes were drier than we were. This is something they left out of the brochure when I asked for pictures and did the research. 😂


After a good little walk through the Glenn, we got into a good spot to make a play on a shootable stag. He had 8-10 hinds that were with him, and they all were scattered about at the base of a hill. The only way to get to them was to say the hell with the discomfort and crawl in these little crags and ditches until we could get close enough to make it work. Crawling through ditches full of water and swimming to shoot a stag is definitely more than I planned, but we got into around 150 +/- and I was able to close the deal on a cool stag.

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Day 2 of hunting, and we are back at the same property, and that did not hurt my feelings at all. The plan was to see if my wife could get into position to take a good shot, but if things didn’t look promising, Id try to close the deal.

Stags were a little harder to come byt his morning. The weather was fair, but he wind was god almighty strong and meant all the bigger groups were hold up in the nooks and crannies and not out where you could see nay of them. It took a few hours to find a good approachable stag that we felt like we could make work. It actually was almost perfect to make a stalk I felt like she could do without having to do some crazy crawling.

As it turned out, the stalk was great, but the little valley we were in was a little further than we anticipated the shot being. 200 or so is probably the limit on a day like this with my wife and this stag only presented a 260 or so shot. We tried what we could to close the distance, but just couldn’t pull it off with all the eyes watching and ended up getting busted.

We made the long walk back to the truck and the Mrs. was pretty pissed at how all that went down. She wanted another chance, so we grabbed a quick sandwich and started glassing up some new hillsides. It only took a few minutes this time to find a ground of deer with multiple stags. There must have been a Hind in heat, because the number of Stags running around and roaring was crazy. As we dropped down from the truck to go after them, I thought to myself that “This isn’t going to go well”. It didn’t seem like a high probability stalk, but with the number of stags running around, only one had to fuck up, so we took off.

As we moved through the Glenns, we would stop and glass each smaller draw with no real luck, all the while listening to the stags a hillside over just chasing like crazy. Every time we crested a hill, the Stags seemed to be cresting two. With every step we were pushing a little harder and harder but only catching blisters not stags.

At this point we were +4 miles on my watch from the truck and I could tell the Mrs., was seriously regretting the previous eagerness. We took a few minutes to catch our breathe and take stock of ourselves. As we were doing this, 2 separate Stags roared out just around the hill from where we were sitting. As we were sitting here, the Wife tells me that she would rather stay back and let me make the stalk. She’s done for at this point and was worried that she couldn’t make the shot at this point she was so tired. Prodding was not doing any good, so I relented and off Mathew and I went.

We scrambled down to the edge and peered around to see one of the larger stags standing on a small ledge all by his self just roaring his head off. Just need to get a range on him and make a plan. No Dice, Matthew’s rangefinder is dead. No problem, mine is ..…”dead too” and neither of us had a new battery. Luckily, we were able to swamp my old battery into his rangefinder and got it to work just long enough to get a range of 275. I look back at the wife to just double check, but she’s already taking a nap. 😊

The setup couldn’t have been better, we were able to slide hill just below his field of view and sneak to 140 yards. We eased up to a perfect resting spot and I was able to get the .270 win onto him. I watched him roar a few times through the scope just waiting for a look at the shoulder. Finally, he opened a window, and I sent him a present. The shot looked pretty good, but you just never truly know if they aren’t DRT. Theres no 30 mins wait here, so we ran up to where he was on this perfect little pocket. It was out of all the wind on three sides with a little creek beside it and with the most incredible view of the Lock below. He was piled up right there, at the top of the mountain, looking right down on Lock Ness. I couldn’t have drawn it up any better.

The wife heard the shot and after 15-20 minutes she showed up feeling a little energized at the thought of heading to the truck. We took some pictures and looked around for a few minutes, then it dawns on me that we’ve got a tad of a walk to get out of here. Total truck to truck walking was 6.81 miles in about 5 hours. The dogs were hurting, and the Mrs. is officially out on all future mountain hunts. I guess the Asian Ibex hunt or Kodiak Mtn Goat will be on me solo in the future. (Any takers??)

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Day 3 deer hunt was not really a highlight of the trip. After the tour of the country the day before, both my wife and my buddy’s decided they were done on the stag hunting. My buddy and I spent the day hunting together, but the weather was exceptionally bad. 30 mph winds and 2” of rain is bad anywhere in the world. It really was a pretty miserable day, but even still, it was hunting Stag in Scotland and that was special. Even if I was standing in knee deep water on top of a mountain or on the down slope, or at the bottom hill.



High and Low Observations
Argos are not great at any one thing, but they are good at a lot, and will go anywhere you’re brave enough to take them,.

Check batteries before you go hunting

Barbour Coats are pretty damn badass coats. Warm and windproof. I’ve had one for 5 years but never put it to the test. I should use it more.

Those royals are pretty well off. If a princess wants you to marry her, say yes.

Winners wear Scottish Flat caps. I was the only cat with a Baseball Cap in the country and after wearing one in the rain, I get it.


London, as everyone knows, is filled with history, but what you didn’t know is that it also has idiots. Thousands, probably Millions of idiots, and they all work at Heathrow airport. Upon arrival and departure from this lovely, designed place, we got the exciting opportunity to experience 25-minute bus rides between terminals, unfriendly and non-supportive staff, and best of all temporarily displaced luggage.

London Airport sucks. Philadelphia airport sucks, Philadelphia sucks in general. Especially Bryce Harper.
Covid on vacation sucks. Glad I didn’t get it in 2021, I would have had to stay a few extra days.

[BigBrother]

Damned cool trip.

I am jealous.

[chocolate lab84]

That is awesome. I always enjoy your posts about your trips.

[murraywader]

Good write up thanks for sharing! I want to chase them in the Basque Country.

[Luvin' Labs]

That sounds awesome.

[huntinghagen#12]

That’s not high on my list, but it’s definitely on it. Looks like a good time.

[JABIII]

Great trip! Thanks for sharing...

[buckpro]

Cool trip!

Not sure how far out you are, but an ibex/marco is on the list in the next 5 years

[Glenn]

Awesome trip. Thanks for taking the time to post that.

Does the meat stay there or can you bring it back?

[lil 2 sleepy]

Cool trip!

Not sure how far out you are, but an ibex/marco is on the list in the next 5 years

2024 is going to be a trip down under to slip some steel and carbon into some water buffalo. 2025 is up in the air at the minute. Ibex in Asia would give me all 6 continents and Im not getting younger.

[lil 2 sleepy]

Awesome trip. Thanks for taking the time to post that.

Does the meat stay there or can you bring it back?

It all stays there. They sell the meat to be commercially processed and sold in restaurants.

[Drylok]

I too, grew up driving sticks. However, I can see myself trying to stumble through sitting in the other seat and learning all over again. I am less left handed than many other folks…

The thought made me grin.

Glad y’all had a good time.

[CUduckreeper]

Thank you for the story. Very inspirational.

[2thDoc]

"I dont want to shoot an elephant"

but i'm glad you do. Sounds like you had a grand time.

[USMCsilver]

Spain is on my three year plan. Whatever I can hunt which is plenty.

Scotland would be pretty cool too.

Funny shit on the train. I laughed out loud.

I'm wanting to go around Spain eating Serrano and Ibérico hams.

Scotland or Ireland will hopefully be in the not too distant future -- but it's for beer, Scotch, & castles.

I, too, LOL'd for the train story. And just DAMN the idea of a wrong-sided stick drive. Definitely gotta be 100% sober for that...

AMAZING PHOTS, great narrative! Yup - paint me jealous; totally jealous.

[willk]

Mr. Deeds wasn't sneaky. His late uncle's Butler, Emilio was.

[MC]

What an awesome trip and great writeup. I've been over there twice, not to hunt, just to visit and can relate to your comments on the weather! They have bad weather and then they have terrible weather. How that place isn't eroded into a flat moonscape is beyond me.

Thanks for sharing!