Charlie Ward: Spain Big Game Hunt Report

Spain Big Game Hunt

This trip to Spain was phenomenal. It was my first time, and the culture and food were amazing. I was able to visit and hunt on several properties our outfitter operated in the central and southern areas of the country. The locations were good and centrally located to many areas for sightseeing and accessibility to Madrid, Valencia, and Cordoba.

The terrain varied wildly from lowland pine and creek bottoms where we hunted and harvested Wild Boar, to grass and tree covered upland hills that were loaded with Red Deer and Fallow, to high elevation scrub and shale covered mountains where we watched for Mouflon and Barbary Sheep (Aoudad). Red Stag weren’t in season but we were able to stalk and harvest a hind for one of the game keepers. The stag were all in velvet and still growing, but at this point it was obvious the quality of the herd was high.

There were both free range and fenced ranches. The great thing about the fenced ranches were how big they were. With over 10,000 acres (of which roads didn’t access various areas) it hunted extremely large and I never saw all of the property on the ranch(es). Some areas were extremely thick and provided hundreds of acres of cover that were adjacent to open hillsides where we glassed for stag. The days were extremely hot, so many of them were in the shade or didn’t appear until closer to sundown.

I can’t wait to go back and take Katie next year. Each area we visited offered a plethora of options for non-hunters to do and see. Valencia was a coastal area with great restaurants and shopping areas, as was Madrid. There were also a ton of historical sites, castles, and wineries everywhere we went.