Every year, from late March to the end of April, there comes a sound which pumps adrenaline into the veins of every hunter – the sound of bellowing red deer stags –known here in NZ as ‘the roar’.
For many, it is a once-a-year opportunity to park work, family, and social commitments for a few days and go out in the hills with mates, hoping to hear and see a decent stag.
For others, it is the culmination of years of observing a stag, waiting for it to mature into an animal worthy of mounting on the wall.
The roar is stimulated by the change in daylight hours (hence why it varies little year by year) but also by cooling weather, such as a first frost. Roaring alerts other deer as to their location and intentions – girls, please walk in and guys watch out!
There are marked changes to deer behaviour during the roar. Stags will start displaying hormonally charged behaviour such as thrashing trees and scrub with their antlers, wallowing in mud and corralling hinds (female deer).
Most noticeable is their loss of caution and their instinct to challenge other roaring stags. They will often make a beeline for the source of another roar and herein lays the excitement of roar hunting – calling in a stag by emulating the sound of roaring.
Different genetics between deer herds in New Zealand primarily determine antler size and shape. Escapee stags from deer velvet farms can breed with wild hinds and introduce extremely large antler genes into the pool. Trophy hunters look for size, spread and symmetry of antlers (the latter evaluated using the Douglas Score system).
Typically, a mature stag will be at least eight years old, anything younger is likely to have not reached its full growth potential and would not have had sufficient time to pass its genetics on (female deer have only one fawn once a year).
The Game Animal Council have produced an invaluable NZ Red Stag Ageing Guide, which sets out how best to properly evaluate a potential trophy paying attention to antler points and thickness, shape and relative sizes of legs, chest, neck and head, as well as its gait (how it moves), all of which change during the life of a stag. Safety is, of course, paramount. The Mountain Safety Council state that 80 per cent of mis-identified hunting target incidents were from the same hunting party.
Go to mountainsafety.org.nz/learn/activities/big-game to get essential advice on how we can all come home from a roar trip safely and in one piece.
