Waikato trophy stag sells for record price
A Waikato trophy stag that sold for $155,000 auction price comes from a line of deer with a history of record breaking prices.
The five-year-old stag’s owner, Todd Crowley of Crowley Deer, said the stag came from one of the industry’s leading sires for trophy genetics.
The stag was Lot 1 of Crowley’s annual sale on his farm just out of Hamilton. He said it was an incredibly well-bred animal on both sire and dam with an attractive, extremely wide head.
‘‘He had an extremely clean, orthodox trophy head and it was just the fact that two people wanted him on the day and were pretty determined to get him.
‘‘It is a record for a stag sold at public auction and a record for a stag sold at auction as well. But his sire (father) was actually sold for a worldwide record of
$300,000.’’
That was a private sale which took place three years ago, he said.
‘‘[The father] also sired another stag which sold for
$128,000 two years ago.’’ Crowley said as far as he was aware, the deer industry has only ever had five stags sell for over $100,000 at auction.
‘‘And that stag that we sold for $300,000 has sired two of them in the last three years, so he’s done a pretty good job.’’ It was bought by Mt Cecil Trophy Deer Stud near Timaru at a sale in December as a trophy sire.
Crowley said they focused on trophy genetics, selling young stags to farmers for breeding.
‘‘We are not selling them to be shot as trophy stags, we are selling them to be sire stags. We focus on the trophy side of it but we are slowly starting to diversify into velvet genetics.’’ The high prices come at a time when the deer industry has record high venison and velvet prices. However the trophy market was ‘‘struggling a wee bit’’ due to supply and demand.