In previous posts, I described attending the SCI Convention in Nashville and talking to outfitters from Argentina and New Zealand. I was a little put off by the New Zealand hunts as they seemed to be mostly hunting genetically managed/farmed animals in relatively small high fence operations. I really prefer authentic free-range hunts of wild animals. So I selected this outfitter in Argentina. Argentina Top Hunts - Chischaca Lodge They indicated that they had a 125,000 acre ranch with a 4,000 acre high fence area. Both high fence and free-range hunting were represented as available.
That's the background - here's the Hollywood shot for my hunt. Play by play to follow.
Incidentally, Cecilia and Valeria from the outfitter made all of the arrangements for us in Buenos Aires for airport transfers, hotels, internal flights, restaurants, cars/drivers, and tours. They were a great resource. Cecilia was even standing on the curb to greet us when we arrived at our hotel.
We had a lovely dinner that evening at Nuestro Secreto at the Four Seasons.
The next day we had a tour with a guide and a private car with driver. We saw a cathedral.
A classic BA cafe.
Several market areas.
A bookstore in a former theater.
And then we had an evening flight to San Luis. We were met by Nico and the guides. We drove in the dark for 1.5 hours to the lodge where we had a welcoming steak dinner and met the other guests Sarah, Emily, Nettie, Brian and Tony.
This is when I started to get the hint that the free range hunting wasn't exactly what I was expecting. It was after midnight and we went off to bed. Nico took this selfie - he's the Host/General Manager and he has very good English. He is also a flyfishing guide the rest of the year.
It is possible to import rifles into Argentina but I understood it to be a bureaucratic, time consuming, and somewhat unpredictable process. I chose to hunt with a "camp gun". They had several options to pick from - 6.5 Creedmoor, 30-06, 300WM, Tikka, Weatherby, etc. They were all wearing Swarovski scopes. I chose the Tikka in 30-06 and it shot well at the sunrise sight-in.
This is a shot of the shooting range just at the back of the lodge.
Joan slept in and had some lodge time.
For the first morning, Nico suggested to just get out and do an orientation walk inside the fence. We piled in these cool VW trucks and drove the 10 miles (30 minutes) over to the high fence area.
Brian and I went for a walk with Bocha who would be my guide for the week. He didn't have much English but he was a guiding/killing machine. We started walking upwind and immediately started hearing stags roaring.
The land was nearly flat and really thick with pretty high grass.
There was also a lot of mesquite like brush/trees
Everything had thorns, prickers, and stickers.
We saw a lot of stags and some of them were monstrous. The roars surrounded us and seemed extremely close by in thick brush. Most of the time, we couldn't see the stag even though the roar seemed to be very close. Here's some videos for an idea - turn your sound on to hear the roars. They are sort of a hybrid of a cattle sound with a lion roar with an elk-like chuckle at the end of some of them.
Over lunch, Nico explained to me that the other hunters would leave at 4pm for spot and stalk inside the fence. Since I wanted to hunt free range stag, the best way to do that was to wait until 6:00, set up outside the fence at near dark, use thermal imaging to find the stags in the brush, and wait for them to come into the fence as they are attracted by the females inside the fence. Or they came for the prospect of fighting with stags inside the fence. There were lots of hoof prints as evidence of stags pacing the fence on both the inside and the outside of it.
This was not what I had in mind for hunting free-range on a 125,000 acre ranch.
This is the fence. It is 2 meters high and it is effective at keeping cattle out of the hunting area. It's more of a guideline for mature stags. I watched a 350"ish stag jump this fence from a standstill and he didn't appear to expend much effort doing it. One day we were driving for a look at the water buffalo and I just glanced at the odometer as we drove the length of one fence line. It was 5 kilometers (3 miles).
Anyway, I went to "Plan B" to spot and stalk hunt inside the fence. Bocha and I went out the first afternoon. Since the stags are priced by trophy size, he asked me my budget. I told him what I was willing to pay in a trophy fee.
We walked upwind into thick cover and were immediately in roars. They seemed to only be 30 yards away in all directions but it was so thick, I would only get glimpses of huge rack tops moving above the brush. I have no idea how Bocha could judge animal size with so little visibility.
We got busted by a female at one point. He had me set up on the sticks at another point and a female went by. A large rack stag came into the open following her. He was coming directly at us less than 75 yards away. Bocha gave me the OK to shoot it but I had only a direct frontal shot on a slowly moving stag. And I couldn't believe it was in my price range - it was big, very big. Anyway, I never got a shot off and we moved on.
We were once again surrounded by roaring stags but none were visible (to me). Bocha determined that one was the right size and set me up on the sticks. I caught glimpses of it roaring behind trees and bushes. Sometimes I could see only tines above the brush. Other times I'd get a glimpse of body in a window in the brush. He seemed to be pacing and roaring in a very small pattern in the brush.
We moved left and set up. We moved right and set up. We crouched under a tree and set up. We waited and watched. Eventually I got a pretty good look at the rack moving back and forth above the brush. Bocha told me to get ready because he was moving to a small window in the brush. I saw hair of the body in the window about the size of his chest and Bocha told me to take him. It was about a 50 yard shot and seemed good. He went out of sight and it went quiet. We moved up and found him on the ground only 20 yards from where he had been shot. His head was up so I gave him a finishing shot. Bocha showed me the mass on this beast.
I thought my first shot was directly in the boiler-room but it turns out it was in the neck. It was time to set up for photos and radio for recovery help.
He ended up being 7x8 with a lot of palmation on the one side. It's hard to get all the aspects of the rack in a single photo.
And Bocha took a ton of photos.
I don't think the body is as big as an elk but it is a very large deer with a massive neck. They didn't even field dress it and just dragged it to the truck at least 300 yards away. Three guys manually lifted it into the bed of the truck.
Day one was done and I had a trophy in the salt. Sarah also shot a crowned stag and managed to scope herself in the process. Her Dad, Tony, took a management stag. Brian shot a blackbuck.
Some more landscape looks inside the fence. It's really one of the most easily huntable geographies that I have experienced. Relatively flat. Lots of grass with sandy soil - very few rocks/boulders. Dusty.
On Day 2 we decided to go for fallow deer. They hang out in the more open areas as do the blackbuck. Bocha spotted a good one with does and I got on sticks with a 160 yard shot. For some reason I clean missed a shot, they didn't spook, and I put it down with the 2nd shot. When we approached, it became obvious that a finishing shot was needed.
We covered quite a bit of open territory before this shot opportunity happened.
We also spotted a llama.
After lunch, several of the nonhunters went on a long trail ride with one of the gauchos.
In the afternoon, we returned to the open area and covered quite a bit of ground before a shot opportunity happened on blackbuck. It was also 160 yards and when I took the shot, the animal dropped in its tracks. Bocha and I shook hands and hugged, then turned to walk in on the animal. As we watched, it slowly got up and started to limp away. I sent a couple more rounds downrange and it seemed to just give it an adrenalin rush. As we tried to close range and stay downwind, he seemed to be getting stronger. We had to hustle to keep it in sight, wait for it to bed, and try to get close for a follow up. More shots were fired including an ill-advised offhand or two. Eventually, Bocha gave me the calm down signal, we got in position and finished it. It was quite a rodeo and Bocha showed me his ammo pouch - it was empty.
It's a small but attractive antelope. The recovery was fairly easy.
Joan, Tony and Sarah all got to witness the second half of this rodeo as Bocha had called in the recovery truck after the first shot. They were all along for the ride.
During this pursuit, we were stalking in a crouch under a tree and I didn't see a dead branch spear coming at me due to the brim of my hat. It skimmed off the brim, stabbed me in the glasses, and took a chunk out of my cheek. That was followed by another swift move when I stepped into a gopher hole and completely face-planted. Nothing really hurt except my pride. Bocha got a giggle.
It turned out to be a 23,000 step day - 10 miles on foot. It really didn't seem that active at all. I had 20,000 steps on a cape buffalo hunt and I was ready to die from exhaustion. This geography is just easily walkable.
Between those two hunts we had a lovely outdoor BBQ for lunch where the chef gave us a meat sampler of sausage, beef and pork cuts.
Have I mentioned how good the food was on the whole trip? And we had several delicious game meals like fallow deer osso buco, blackbuck empanada's, stag pasta bolognaise, stag carpaccio, and a black buck cheesy crepe that was almost like an enchilada. And desserts with dulce de leche. That's an Argentinian carmel-like sweet.
We saw several groups of buffalo.
Including a couple bulls.
In the evening, they sometimes go out to hunt vizchachas. Vizchacha Wiki They sort of look like a cross between a rabbit and a raccoon. The hunter stands in the bed of the truck with a spotter with a light. The weapon of choice is a 17HMR semi automatic. Vizchacha Hunt They are considered to be quite tasty and we had some in empanadas. On low wind evenings, they can really be stacked up. One jackrabbit was also accidentally harvested. Later a skunk (pew!) was shot - Bocha called the shot on that one but no one recovered it...
Most days had cool mornings (50's) and highs in the 70's. One morning had a little fog. But usually it was sunny all day.
Nico encouraged me to help with one of his management tasks. He asked me to shoot a management stag. Any stag that doesn't develop at least a set of three tines in the crown is considered a target for management. Especially stags with just one long spike instead of a multi-pronged crown need to be removed. They could injure other deer with their saber.
One afternoon we took a drive to a different part of the ranch with several large pond/lakes. The other typically hunted species on this ranch is the Asian water buffalo. They live near these water features and are not constrained by fence. We saw one confused female buffalo up by the lodge that was hanging out with the brown cows.
Bocha got me set up on a couple but I didn't get the shot off on them..
Eventually he found me a young management stag standing broadside at 100 yards. The grass came up to mid chest level. At the shot, Bocha was unsure whether it was a hit. I thought it was a good shot but I am never surprised when I miss. We walked up and found that it didn't go 20 yards.
We eventually took a hero shot with it. I'm not sure why.
Joan came out in the field in the afternoons. She spotted these owls. I think that they are burrowing owls.
Nico had some archery hunters coming in after us so he did some target practice to test out his range. I completed hunting my target animals in the first two days. With three days left I was worried about boredom but I went out in the field with other hunters or took some driving tours with Nico or went on walks. It was a very relaxing and pleasant trip.
The chef is creative. For dessert at the last lunch he served a dolce de leche filled cookie stuck onto a rock for presentation.
Brian had some bad luck trying to get his stag. He had a clean miss and shot a tree. In another case, he and Nico both say he made a perfect shot on a shoulder of a stag from 100 yards. They heard the impact and watched the animal react. But no sign was ever found. At least ten of us searched for a couple hours one evening and then again the next morning. Not a single drop of blood was ever found.
On the last morning, Brian shot this "outsider" stag. Nico says that it is representative of the free range animals outside of the controlled environment inside the fence. It had an elk-like 5x5 rack without a basket crown.
Nico says that the outsiders have bigger bodies and smaller racks - he's not really sure why. If it was nutrition, you'd think both would be smaller.
On the last afternoon with everyone tagged out, Nico took us for a drive to see more of the ranch operation. We went thru the fenced hunting area and found another fenced area on the other side. Nico says this is the pen where the breeding stock is kept. The females inside this pen have the best genetics. And each breeding season they somehow get a couple of the best stags from the hunting enclosure into the pen to breed these high quality females.
As we approached, a massive stag was at the fence line kind of facing off with another stag in the hunting enclosure. He was pacing the fence line and acting like he was going to jump. Since I had seen one do it before, I knew it was entirely possible. Check him in this video. Stag at the Fence
As we drove further along this breeding pen, we came across an even bigger stag. Just enormous.
They work to improve the genetics of their herd by having this controlled breeding of the best of their herd inside this pen. Combined with the removal of the "management stags", the tendency is to upgrade the genetics of the entire herd. But there is leakage out of the fenced area and outsiders getting into the fence. And, of course, breeding is not just occurring in the breeding pen.
They also have issues with poachers. Nico says they find about 6 headless bodies every year. Poachers sneak in at night with suppressed rifles and hunt with night vision for trophies (not food). The headless bodies are left to rot in the field.
This is a huge, 125,000 acre cattle operation. I'm told that it takes hours just to drive across it. Probably less than 10,000 acres of it has been allocated to hunting since 2007. The hunting is a business and it is managed as such. Nico indicated that they would host about 100 hunters in a season.
I have done quite a few destination, outfitted hunts over the years. In 2022, I wrote this blog post about them. Outfitted Hunt History Since that post, I've added several additional trips including for cape buffalo in Africa. In all of that history, I never took a hunt that had sliding scale pricing based on the size of the trophy taken. This was my first one. So what did I think?
I very much prefer free-range wild hunting with naturally occurring trophies. It is becoming a scarce commodity and the US might have the most of it in the world.
There is a huge spectrum of game management ranging from completely wild, free-range hunting all the way to "canned hunts" of domestically raised lions in small pens.
I do some management on my own farm. I plant food plots and put out minerals. I try to improve the habitat on my farm by selectively cutting trees and removing invasive plants. But I don't use corn feeders nor do I have high fences to keep deer on my property. I try to make my property the place where the animals prefer to hang out by having habitat that gives them food, water and cover.
I don't know if there are absolute rights and wrongs but there are many "shades of grey" in the spectrum of managed habitat and hunts. I know that I don't like canned lion hunting. And I'm turned off by some aspects of the South African game farming business - selectively breeding rare mutants (golden wildebeests or black impalas) for sale as breeding stock at game auctions (for example).
I selected this hunt because of the prospect of free-range hunting on a large property after being somewhat turned off by the contrived/managed/genetically manipulated nature of most New Zealand stag hunts that I heard about at the SCI show.
So what's the "final answer"? I'm not sure that I have one but these are my observations:
1.) Everyone that I dealt with at Argentina Top Hunts was wonderful. Cecilia, Valeria, Nico, Bocha, Chef - they were all professionals doing a really good job in the hospitality business.
2.) The lodge was perfect, the food was perfect, the weather was perfect, the landscape was easy to hunt.
3.) I was disappointed that there was not truly free-range hunting available on this huge property. Sitting a fence with thermal imaging isn't my idea of free-range hunting.
4.) I decided to spot and stalk hunt inside the fence and I believe that it is "fair chase" hunting. The fence keeps cattle out and mostly contains the managed herd of red stags. But it is not "free range".
5.) The habitat inside the fence is managed for optimal herd development and hunting conditions. There is pumped water for the animals, lush grass, the cover is not allowed to be too thick but it provides enough "security cover".
6.) At about 4000 acres inside the hunting plot, it is not canned, put-and-take hunting. The animals have to be stalked and can easily escape (I demonstrated this several times).
7.) Selecting a trophy size from a fee schedule and then going out into a fenced area to hunt for one (that you know will be there) is, in my opinion, a bit less of a real hunting experience versus hunting wild lands and making the decision whether the wild animal in front of you is "good enough". In that case, you're always taking a chance of "tag soup" if you pass on a chance to harvest an animal. Inside the fence, there's always another chance.
8.) It would be nearly impossible to experience the same target-rich environment and density of trophy class animals in a wild setting. This is truly an experience - to be surrounded by roaring trophy animals in every direction and just getting a glimpse of all of these magnificent beasts - it's really something.
I will proudly display my magnificent red stag (wall space is starting to be an issue). But will I value it more or less than the wild elk beside it? I think that I will always prefer the wild free-range hunt (although they are rapidly becoming a rare find). If I am going to hunt high fence in the future, I will always favor the hunt with the biggest area and the least unnatural intervention. I'm really in awe of some of the genetic marvels that are being bred but I don't think that I want to pay by the inch to get one.
Thanks for sharing Tom. Looks like quite and experience. Congrats on the trophies. I wouldn't worry too much about what others think or say about this type of hunt, the important thing is you actually did it while most others just talk or dream about it.
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