Can deer weigh more than a quarter of a ton?

I remember reading a deer stalking article saying that a Red Stag could weigh more than quarter of a ton.

Deer stalking
GEORGE WALLACE
They most certainly do – and I am pleased to see you are old enough to know how to spell ‘ton’ correctly!

A Highland stag might weigh anything from about 12-stone (1.5 hundredweight or 168 pounds) but animals in the better feeding grounds, lower down and further south, can get to an impressive size.

Most of the world seems to operate on the metric system, presumably because they can’t cope unless everything is in multiples of ten so they can count on their fingers.

So, for the unfortunate victims of EC Dictat and modern education, a proper, gentleman’s ton is 20 hundredweight or 2,240 pounds.

Quarter of that is five hundredweight, which is 560 pounds and a big Red stag can most certainly weigh that much.

I remember some years ago that a friend in Norfolk told me of shooting such a stag and showed me the receipt from the game dealer.

The stag weighed 527 pounds clean, ie, gralloched and with head and feet removed.

Put it all back and we probably had an animal that, alive, weighed nearer a third than a quarter of a ton.

For those few, sad readers, brainwashed by the system, who can’t remember proper measurements, quarter of a ton is about 254 kilos.

Don’t try to lift it on your own. And it’s also best if you don’t try to shoot it with a .243!

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