Patagonia Red Stag Redemption a Half Decade in the Making

The truck door closed with a near-silent click, followed by a distant roar that rumbled down the wide valley. Darkness gradually ceded to the day, the half-light of dawn revealing gray shadows in the grass-covered flats lining the thin stream. We stalked our way towards the sound, creeping up the valley behind what little cover there was to hide our approach. I could just make out a small herd of red deer in the wan light, the hinds, as female red deer are called, moving into heavier cover. One deer, with a bigger body that surely signified a stag and the source of the infrequent roars, feinted charges at a few smaller stags that circled the main herd.

“Can you shoot him from here,” asked Lucas O’Farrell, my Argentinian friend and guide for the week.

The laser rangefinder read 337 yards. A makeable shot with a solid rest and a familiar rifle. Right now, we were kneeling just below the crest of a rock-covered mound. I tried to steady the rifle—an old, camo-clad Model 700 borrowed from O’Farrell—in my shooting sticks. The reticle danced around the stag, which refused to stand still for more than a second. The light was still poor and, after waiting a long time for this moment, I was also suffering no small amount of buck fever. I just didn’t feel comfortable taking this shot. “I think I can crawl up to there and get prone,” I half-whispered, pointing to the scraggly rosehips growing among the rocks ahead of us.

O’Farrell waved me back and, instead, we circled the small hill, trying to make the next rise in the landscape without getting busted. It was only then I saw the three hinds standing on top of a tall hill, their heads up and turned directly at us. They disappeared into the valley, followed quickly by the rest of the herd, including the stag I had waited so long to find.

The Last Roar

The morning’s hunt had been a near-exact recreation of my last stag hunt in Argentina, minus the actual appearance of a stag, or any red deer for that matter. Five years prior, back in 2018, a group of friends and I traveled to Patagonia on the hunt for red stag. It was an expeditionary mission to a new and unproven area, but we hoped to hit the roar just right, which would give us an opportunity for an up-close encounter with the vocal, rutting stags.

Lucas O’Farrell had been our host then as well, and the estancia we hunted had belonged to his family for generations. The working cattle ranch was split by a gin-clear river flowing from Lake Quillen, which reflected the high, snow-covered peak of Lanin, a dormant volcano straddling the border between Argentina and Chile. Waves lapped at the beach beside our remote, off-grid cabin. Too humble to be called a lodge and far from anywhere, Puerto Lussich has hosted such famous anglers as Mel Krieger, Ted Turner and others, all drawn to world-class dry-fly fishing the Quillen River is known for. O’Farrell, who runs hunting lodges in other parts of Argentina, hoped to turn his family’s estancia into a big-game destination as well.

That first morning in 2018, O’Farrell sent the bowhunters into the surrounding woods with his guides, while I followed him into a block of pines planted during a forestry boom in mid-1980s. The woodblock has been recently trimmed and the dead branches and duff had been raked into rows. O’Farrell cautioned me to follow closely behind as we navigated the noisy minefield. We were just a few yards from the truck when I heard it—a guttural roar that brought to mind a dinosaur rather than the more-familiar bugle of the red stag’s cousin, the Rocky Mountain elk. The sound resonated through the timber, echoing into the distance. Still too dark to shoot, O’Farrell crept forward. The stag roared again, closer. And then a branched cracked, seemingly as loud as the previous roar. I had stepped directly into a row of the raked branches. The woods fell silent.

For the next five days we hunted hard in rain, frost and high winds. Except for a brief glimpse at a patch of hair in the brush, no one saw, or heard, another stag. It was as challenging a hunt as I can remember, mentally grueling, but punctuated by moments of beauty and laughter that kept our spirits high. We were, after all, hunting in Patagonia, a landscape that is wild and a people that are welcoming.

Remarkable Region

Like all of Argentina, the region has a way of etching itself into the soul of those who visit.

One day, I sat high above the Quillen River valley, near an X scratched into the dirt by a gaucho, where he’d seen a deer a day before. This morning, however, a dense fog settled in below us. Had there been a stag stealing a sip from the river, I would never have seen it. Yet, it was a memorable moment I relive often.

Finally, on the last afternoon, while guide Diego and I searched the surrounding country for a Hail Mary, a rifle shot cracked in the distance. My friend Ryan Cade traded his bow for a gun and made the most of a brief encounter with a broken-horned stag, redefining what success looked like for the entire group. We vowed that night, over fresh red deer backstraps and lots of red wine, to return.

It was two years before all our schedules could realign, but in the weeks leading up to the 2020 trip, the world worked against us as a pandemic quickly spread around the globe. One by one, our group dropped out. Chris Currah and I vowed we’d still go, but finally, the last domino fell as Argentina closed its borders to visitors and, essentially, all global travel came to a halt.

Five Years Gone

How does the saying go? You can never step in the same river twice? Well, I certainly wondered if that was true as we forded the Quillen one afternoon last spring. On our way to sight in the rifles, we splashed through a familiar river, passed through the same gates and stopped near the trail where a gaucho had once dug an X into the dirt, directing me not to a stag, but a core memory in my hunting life.

The estancia was the same, but the world was different. Diego, Nico and the other guides were gone. The lakeside house was closed for the season, so we stayed in another of O’Farrell’s family cabins, slightly more modern with electrical hookups, but no less quaint. Also, Chris Currah and I would not be hunting on the ranch itself, and instead heading into the surrounding highlands each morning, which offered grand views and better glassing than the tight confines and brushy pastures of the pine plantation.

After the missed opportunity that first morning, we hunted hard in search of another red deer.

Like the earlier trip, the annual rut was winding down. Each day we did hear stags roaring in the thick pine of neighboring hillsides, but the bulls we caught in the open were young. The pressure weighed on us. Twice, I had small deer in my scope, but that wasn’t what I came back to Patagonia for. I had come to complete the story we had started a half-decade ago, and hopefully write a happier ending.

REBOOT, Literally

Patagonia is as unforgiving as it is welcoming—a harsh country, covered in rocky terrain lying below its lush grassy plains. The wind always blows and the weather can change in an instant. With the high peaks of the Andes nearby, it’s also far from flat. In other words, it’s the perfect place to put hunting gear to a real test in real conditions.

For this hunt, I traded in my trusty Danner Pronghorns and laced up the new Ursa MS hunting boots from LaCrosse. Built tough, they survived five days of climbing through sharp volcanic rocks, heavy brush and dew-laden grass. To create such a durable boot, LaCrosse started with a special treated leather that’s been infused with polyurethane for added resistance to weather and wear. The designers wrapped those uppers with full, 360-degree rubber rands that are both cemented and double-stitched in place. It’s safe to say, it’ll be years before these boots wear out. Textile panels in the sides of the boot help reduce weight to little more than 
3 pounds per pair, but don’t sacrifice toughness.

Underneath, Vibram outsoles inspired by mountaineering boots help provide sure traction in all types of terrain. Sandwiched between the outsoles and the uppers are EVA midsoles and polyurethane footboards for added cushioning and comfort. And, of course, the boots are wrapped with a Gore-Tex liner for legendary waterproof and breathable protection from the elements.

The Ursa MS boots are a bit stiff out of the box, particularly around the ankle. Don’t expect to take them straight from the outdoor store to an elk hunt. Like most hunting boots, they benefit from a break-in period. Wear them around the house or office. Walk around neighborhood with them and tackle some moderate hikes. Within a day or two of steady use, they will conform to your feet and be ready for any terrain you care to tackle. $300; lacrossefootwear.com

Above the Clouds

The main ranch we hunted rose out of the Aluminé River into rolling, grass-covered highlands that make up the foothills of the high Andes. As we put the pieces together, getting closer to catching one of the many stags whose roars echoed through hills, we often found ourselves above the clouds that settled heavily into the river at night. Far off in the distance, Lanin stood sentinel, gathering a dusting of snow as the southern hemisphere’s coming winter approached.

On the third morning, we skirted a high hill as a heavy fog rolled across the landscape. We could make out a small herd of red deer moving to the cover of pines. Once, when the fog lifted briefly, we caught glimpse of a stag, confirmed by a roar as it gathered its hinds and headed to the trees. Just as quickly, the fog returned, limiting our view to mere yards. O’Farrell and I conferred and agreed, from our brief look, the stag was mature. These were not the multi-crowned trophies farmed for high-dollar luxury lodges, but true wild deer scratching out a living in the harsh Patagonian environment.

It was probably all my head, but the fog seemed to grow heavier, weighing on my shoulders, if that was possible. I thought back to that morning on the Quillen. Patagonia, as welcoming as the country and its people were, seemed determined to keep its stags hidden. I had enough memories of its beautiful landscapes to last a lifetime. What was still missing from the story was the stag. And here was one in rifle range, yet obscured from view.

As the wind pushed the fog down the small draw, it revealed a pair of hinds standing just below us, and suddenly, the stag was there too. I settled the crosshairs as best I could and pulled the trigger just as another fog bank moved in, dropping a dense, wet curtain on the final scene.

Full-Circle Elation

The shot felt good and the stag disappeared at the impact, but we couldn’t be sure and couldn’t see due to the dense fog. After a brief intermission, we crept closer, bumping the two hinds as we approached—a good sign as they likely would have followed the stag had it run. Then, there it was laying in the brush, a wild, mature Patagonian red stag, the last chapter written for a story that I started five years before.

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