Black ink stag head with large antlers inside a dotted circle, in an etched style, on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stag head with antlers on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A stag's head and neck, with a full pair of antlers that rise above it, is drawn in black ink on the forearm. Fine hatching and stippled dots give the fur and neck an engraved, shaded look, and a faint dotted circle sits behind the antlers. The image is in black and grey against a dark, patterned background, with the tattoo centred on the arm.

Dotwork Forearm Stag Deer Antler Circle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the third step, it's soft as a biscuit. There. Sit where the gulls can't reach your chips, and I'll tell you about the stag that walked into Porthavel the winter the pilchards failed.

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He came down off the moor in the snow, antlers so wide the fishermen swore they'd snagged the fog. Old Mrs Tresize, who kept the chandlery, set out a bucket of salt fish for him on the quay. He ate it, then lifted his head and looked past her to the breakwater, where the lamp was lit against the dark. Every night after that he stood at the wall and watched the harbour mouth, and every frost left a ring of tiny white dots hanging in the air around his crown, like the moon had come down to rest on his horns.

Young Jory Pascoe decided the beast was the drowned king's messenger. He took the Morwenna out past the light with a lantern and two hundred yards of net, and came back three days later with nothing in the hold but a cold he never quite shook. He swore he'd seen the stag standing on the swell, hooves dry on the water, turning his head towards the far rocks where the real fish were running, silver and thick as rope.

The town fished those rocks all spring. Nobody saw the stag again, but each morning someone found a bright scale tucked under the chandlery door, and Jory said the antlers were counting the boats home. That's the one thing I'm sure of. Go on, take that grey tine from the tin. Feel how light it is, for a thing that carried a whole winter on its head.