A CHITAL STAG TAKEN BY PETER JOHANNESEN

FEATURE TROPHY

Peter Johannesen’s great chital trophy taken in 2013 in Queensland that features here rates ninth in the ADA’s Top 50 for the species. The head has great main beam and tine lengths and near-perfect symmetry, all attributes that are required of a high-scoring trophy under the Douglas System. A lack of broken tine points in a species famed for slender antlers and aggressive behaviour is certainly relevant too.

Although chital do occur outside Queensland, the ADA’s Top 50 is dominated by heads from that state, only one of the listed 50 having been taken in New South Wales, a situation that is unlikely to change any time soon given that this species, uniquely among Australia’s six deer, is very much adapted to a tropical environment of grassland fringing escape cover.

Chital hunting in Australia was not legally possible until fairly recently and, as the only population back then was restricted to a couple of stations near Charters Towers, few animals in the Top 50 go back very far – a few prior to the 1990s and then the majority taken in the 2000s and 2010s, with only a handful in the 2020s.

While heavy culling of chital populations has been happening in recent times there is no doubt that a chital stag will long-remain on the bucket list of every committed Australian deer hunter!