Planning · How a Hunt Works
What actually happens
From the moment you land to the day the crate arrives at your house.
Before you come
You enquire, we hold your dates, you pay a deposit, and we file the paperwork — the invitation letter, the permit application, the customs pre-notification. Most of the anxiety of a foreign hunt happens here, and most of it is ours to carry.
Getting here
You fly into Rīga or Palanga; we meet you at arrivals and drive you in. The last half hour is forest on both sides of the road. By the time the trees close over, you are already somewhere else.
The first evening
You check and zero your rifle, meet the guide who will be with you all week, and hear the plan over dinner. Nobody hunts on the day they travel; the first evening is for arriving properly.
Dark o'clock
Coffee at four. The walk out is done in the dark and mostly in silence, wind in your face, the seat reached before the birds start. Then you wait for the forest to become visible around you.
Waiting
Most mornings nothing happens. This is not a failure of the hunt; it is the hunt. You will see hinds feeding, a fox crossing at sixty metres, and light coming into a forest that is ten thousand years old. Then on the fourth morning a stag walks out and you will have about eleven seconds to decide.
Judging the animal
Your guide reads age, class and cull status faster than you can, and he may tell you not to shoot. That refusal is the product working, not failing. A young stag left standing this year is the reason there is one worth taking in three.
The shot
Placement over distance, every time. If the shot is marginal — bad light, a moving animal, a branch you only half-see — it is not taken. The discipline of the pass is worth more here than the trophy.
Recovery
The animal is approached carefully and, if needed, tracked with a dog for as long as it takes. If it cannot be recovered, the wounded-animal policy applies and your guide will have told you exactly what that means before you ever touched the trigger.
The ritual
There is a way of doing this that is a few hundred years old. The stag is laid on spruce, a fire is lit, someone sounds the horn, and nobody says very much. It takes about ten minutes and guests remember it longer than the shot.
Preparation
In the larder the trophy is caped and boiled out, and measured to CIC once the standard thirty-day drying deduction can be reckoned. You get an honest score, not a hopeful one.
Home
A veterinary certificate is issued through the EU TRACES system, the trophy is crated in treated timber, and it travels to your taxidermist or ours. Germany and Austria, six to ten weeks; Scandinavia, four to eight. You will know where it is the whole way.
When you are ready
That is the whole of it
Eleven steps, and one guide beside you for every one of them. Tell us a window, and we will walk you through the rest.
Enquire about a hunt