Red Stag Killed In Coweta County

John McIntyre, of Grantville, with a Coweta County red stag.

Saturday, October 12, 2024, was a memorable day for diesel mechanic John McIntyre, of Grantville, when he arrowed a buck of a lifetime—a beautiful red stag weighing more than 400 pounds.

“I first got pictures of the stag the day before coming through my cell camera,” said John. “I know of a high fence place that has red stags about 30 miles from where I hunt, so this one may have gotten loose from there.”

The stag came to a bait site with Buck Muscle, an attractant from Strickland Farm Feed in Pine Mountain, that John has been using successfully. He noticed from his trail-camera pictures that the stag seemed to run all the whitetails off. Even the really big, mature bucks left in a hurry when the stag came to the camera.

The next morning, John used his climber to set up over his camera site. As the morning sun got higher, John made his mind up to climb down around 10:30. At 10:19 the stag showed up heading toward the bait. Drawing his bow in anticipation, John had to wait several minutes at full draw for an ethical shot since the stag was facing him. When John shifted in his climber to try to get a different angle at his target, the stag saw him and spooked, but it didn’t run far. This presented John with a good, broadside shot.

“The sound of the impact was so loud,” John said. “I didn’t think I had a pass-through. Not knowing how far an animal that size could run after a shot, I decided to back out of there for a few hours and call my good friend, Taylor Helton, who has tracking dogs.”

The arrow had in fact passed all the way through the big animal.

Once Helton arrived with his dog Maverick, the stag was easily recovered on a solid blood trail that led about 300 yards. The two men had to call several friends to help drag the huge buck out of the woods. John estimated that he got about 125 pounds of meat off the animal.

Taylor Helton and his dog Maverick were used to blood trail the stag about 300 yards.

Lieutenant Bubba Stanford, a 20-year veteran with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Law Enforcement Division who is now with the Special Permits Unit, said, “It is legal to kill exotic deer like that because they are non-native and therefore have no specific hunting seasons or regulations. Once exotic deer get loose, they are considered free range. In fact, we encourage hunters to harvest those deer because they can compete with native wildlife. The exotic deer just don’t belong.”

Lt. Stanford had not heard of any reports of a red stag escaping in the area, but he said that if a deer farm is not operational (operational meaning that the deer are being raised for meat production) then it does not have to be registered with the Department of Agriculture and the DNR.

Currently, there are seven deer farms in Georgia that are registered, but the one that John’s stag likely came from is not, since it is no longer operational. Whitetail deer, by the way, are not legal to raise for meat in Georgia. A high fence may be used on whitetail deer as long as the fenced property is at least 640 contiguous acres, but the deer are still considered state owned, so local hunting regulations must be followed.

Being his first season bowhunting, John has had a super year, harvesting two whitetails before shooting his red stag trophy. But he is not finished hunting yet. “I have a couple of big bucks still on my camera,” he laughed.

John is planning to have the red stag shoulder mounted by Broderick Head’s Taxidermy in Carroll County.

It took heavy equipment to get this red stag out of the woods.