I would consider where I was hunting free range. I was at their main lodge property which is about 60,000 acres. The lodge itself sits inside a fenced estate area, not sure of the size of that area and we saw some massive stags in that area but we hunted outside that smaller fenced area. They do have perimeter high fencing around the property but it was down in many areas and stags moved back and forth. There is some interior fencing but the purpose of that fencing I was told was to manage cattle grazing on the property. The west side of the ranch borders a 250,000 acre ranch owned by the Busch beer family and I never made it back that far although we drove a long way back there towards the Andes mountains. One of the guys there hunting was on his fifth trip with them and he was exclusively hunting back in that area for what he called “mountain stags”. These were free ranging stags coming down out of the mountains to the grassy hills of the Algar Ranch during the roar. They were not as big stags but they have very dark chocolate horns due to them rubbing the velvet off in the pine trees of the mountains and the pine sap darkens the antlers, quite beautiful animals compared to the other ranch stags which are more grey horned because of the grey dirt/mud on the ranch. I can assure you the stags you will see and hunt can cover large distances unimpeded. My guess is if you tell them you want to hunt “free range” stags they are going to say they are all free range. They have a breeding compound by the lodge with some massive stags. Mariano, Juan and a couple of others there are veterinarians by training and they have brought in genetics from NZ and Europe to introduce into their herd which is why they have some monster stags. They indicated the use these stags to breed hinds and then release the hinds back out onto the free range ranch area, not sure how they accomplish this activity. They want to maintain their stag genetics, once you have your stag they encourage you to take as many cull stags as you wish for free as they want to keep those stags from breeding. I took one cull stag which was an older mature stag but his antlers looked about like a 5x5 elk, no crowning even though he was probably an eight year old stag. He was not far from a high perimeter fence and the guide said he had likely come over from the large ranch next to them. Her is a pic of the euro mount I had done of him.
View attachment 657634your cull stag doesn't look much smaller than the stag I got with TGB Outfitters I would like to go after the mountain stags myself if the odds are still good on those. I love the dark chocolate horns. All I know is that when I asked her about free range, she said they are 280"-320" with about 10% of them getting up to 340"-360" size. Either way I'd be very happy with any full crown stag. I may have my son try for a fallow buck if he's big enough to shoot a .243 by next year. He won't be big enough to shoot a stag sufficient caliber for a few years yet.
