Hunter Takes Record Book Red Deer In Turkey with Safari Tours

Subscriber Ed Yates hunted a huge, 10 x 9 Anatolian stag (mid-Eastern red deer) in the Seben area of Turkey with Safari Tours (011-90-533-607-8071; www.safaritours.com.tr/en) this past October. The trophy will likely rank in the SCI top five. (See photo in our online Trophy Gallery.) Yates confesses he got his chance at this bruiser only because he missed a 290-yard shot at a smaller stag earlier. "We saw a really nice stag on the third day. I missed him completely. Nothing went wrong, I just missed," he says. "That miss turned out to be a very good thing two days later when we saw the stag I shot. Aside from moose, this is the largest free-ranging member of the deer family I've ever taken or even seen. He was just huge, close to 700 pounds." Yates tells us that finding a stag was never an issue. In fact, there were so many bugling in the area that Yates found it difficult to sleep in the fly camp. "The stags bugled constantly, all night," he says. "We saw tons of females but heard more males than we saw because the vegetation was so thick." According to hunt organizer Bob Kern of The Hunting Consortium (540-955-0090; www.huntingconsortium.com) Yates hit the middle of the rut, which runs from mid-September to the first week of October. Kern tells us that, while there are plenty of stag, Turkey has low quotas, which keeps some hunters away. "They allow maybe 80 hunters a year, total. The quality of the animals is superb," he says. "Advanced booking is highly recommended." The hunts are spot-and-stalk. The hunt area is steep but easily accessible by horseback. "When not in the fly camp, I stayed at an older resort," says Yates. "It was pretty nice and really comfortable. It even had hot springs. I ate beef kabobs every chance I got. They were excellent." Yates gives the cost of hunt as $16,000, not including hotel, meals, and tips.

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