Thread: New record, strange head

I know these massive stags are not everyone's cup of tea. I agree that a nice wild 12 or 14 pointer red is the pinicle and a proper trophy. I love them too.

On the other hand I do like seeing what genetics can do with these stags. English red base, a bit of German red (brings in a bit of palmation) then add some eastern red for extra length. Follow this up with heaps and heaps of decent feed right on velveting time and next minute a giant head is produced. I've researched thr trophy market and no steroids are used in NZ. (@Moa Hunter can correct me)

Pays to look at the whole Industry. Genetics were first done for production of velvet to boost your income so instead of a 7 year old stag producing say 7kg a few years back at the beginning of the velvet industry a 7 year old stag now would be double that now of say 14+kg of velvet.

Then the trophy market started up and wanted these huge velvet stags in full maturity so this set the genetics going to grow even bigger heads, and with rich overseas guys willing to pay more and more the SCI scores have gone up.

Got told once that the deer market was like a builder building houses. The average bloke is happy with a good solid 3 or 4 bedroom house, but then the rich want 20 bedrooms with a bathroom each and 6 car garaging and 3 entertaining areas. Same with the trophy deer market.