Out with pub crawls, in with the hikes: How the stag do went from depraved to well behaved

Stag dos are debaucherous by nature. The words themselves instantly conjure up a set of stereotypes curated by pop culture and tepid Noughties films. Think sweat-soaked men waving around ties and bravado in strip clubs. Bug-eyed lads hunched over blackjack tables in all-night casinos. Raucous groups of old mates on a mission to prove their masculinity, participating in some sort of 24-hour cult defined by a strange degradation of society, women and themselves. In other words: stags are bad news.

This was the prevailing cultural narrative for a while, one that was hardly helped by the spate of stag do deaths that have taken place over the years – namely Craig Mallon, who was killed by a single punch on a Spanish stag weekend in 2012. There have been many others, with The Guardian reporting in 2018 that at least 30 British men had died in the previous decade while on stag dos, while several others had suffered life-changing injuries.

Even without the fatalities, the stag do’s lingering bad reputation was such that men didn’t want to go on them anymore. According to a 2016 study published in the journal Deviant Behaviour, most men don’t enjoy the “extreme shaming, humiliation and deviance” that has become synonymous with the modern-day stag do. Researchers highlighted instances where men had felt pressure to take part in activities they had no interest in, with one groom saying he had no desire to see “half-naked dancing women, let alone pay them” in a strip club. Others recalled getting lost, robbed or falling asleep in a shop doorway.

I’ve never been on a stag myself. But having written extensively about hen dos – and my own personal distaste for them – I decided to start asking my male friends about the stags they’d been on. Not least because, now in our thirties, all of us seem to be spending most of our summer weekends at either stags, hens or weddings. But after conducting various straw polls, I was surprised (and a little relieved) about what my friends told me about the stags they’d been on. There were no strip clubs, casinos or all-nighters in Las Vegas. Instead, it was ski trips to France. Indulgent dinners in fancy London restaurants. And in one instance, a group trip to Abba Voyage.

“It’s no longer about an old-school pub crawl fuelled by heavy drinking and humiliation rituals for the stag,” says Zoe Burke, wedding expert and editor of Hitched. “Instead, the stag and his mates are looking for activities that result in lasting memories that are fun for the whole group. You’re more likely to find a stag do consisting of pizza and paddle-boarding than getting lost in a cheap European city with no memory of what happened the night before.”

Some of the most popular activities for stags are actually either impossible or illegal to do with alcohol, like go-karting, quad biking, clay pigeon shooting and paintballing. “There’s a fair number of stags doing those sorts of things,” says James Baddiley, CEO at Chillisauce, one of the UK’s leading stag party organisers. “However, there are also loads of popular newer activities such as bubble football, foot golf and escape rooms. One thing we often see is that women take the reins and organise the stag do on behalf of the best man or groom. We’ve even seen the mothers arrange the stag do.”

It’s a sign of the times; we no longer live in an era where groups of men getting together to ogle naked women is deemed acceptable, let alone enjoyable. The codes of masculinity have widened; people mostly just want to have a nice time with their friends. And while drinking does still feature, even the nature of that has progressed. “Many of our stag groups aren’t fans of beer,” says Tom Bourlet, who runs The Stag Company, which has been organising stag dos across the UK for 20 years. “While beer bikes were popular for a while, there is now a range of options, such as prosecco bikes, sangria bikes and wine bikes.”

In fact, the anecdotal evidence suggests that many people want to drink a little less on stags and are finding surreptitious ways to do so. “We’ve noticed that people are trying to include more daytime activities to delay the drinking as much as possible,” Bourlet adds, noting how there has also been a “noticeable” uptick in sober stag weekends. “We have launched a number of comedy show tickets, as this allows a group to go out without feeling the need to drink in a way that bars and clubs don’t work for,” he adds. For his own stag in Lisbon, Bourlet arranged for a sangria bike tour. “I’m not getting a stripper as I find it cringe and weird,” he says. “I was also the best man for my friend and on his stag do last month, we didn’t arrange anything like that for him either.”

Societal progress aside, there are other reasons for the change, like the fact that people are getting married later. Hence those going on stag dos are a little older and wiser than they might’ve been – the Office for National Statistics estimates that the average age for heterosexual men to get married is around 38. “This age bracket has more disposable income, and the hangovers hit a lot harder,” says Burke. “There’s also a general shift away from the idea of toxic masculinity and towards more mindful drinking – you’re way less likely to get ridiculed if you don’t want to drink and you’d prefer to go for a hike instead.”

You’re also more likely to find mixed gender stag and hen dos than you might’ve ever been in the past, often referred to as “sten” or “hag” dos. According to Bourlet, around 20 per cent of his company’s stag weekend bookings include women within the group, with the number increasing each year. “The reality is that not being able to invite a close personal friend onto your stag or hen weekend, simply because they’re a different gender, is a silly tradition,” he says. “The weekend is about celebrating your upcoming wedding with your friends. Our party planners often speak on the phone to customers who ask whether they can invite someone of the same gender, and we always say that they should feel able to do so if it’s a good friend, regardless of traditions.”

I’ve seen this among my own friends, too; one recently organised a “hag do” for her closest male friend and all his female friends. The group went line dancing and drank Prosecco on a party bus through London. Burke has noticed the gear-change, too. “It can keep costs down as it’s only one celebration, and most couples now have been together for several years, so they share the same friendship group anyway,” she says.

Generally speaking, it feels like all of this is a positive evolution. Not just because more wholesome stag and sten dos are less stressful – not being weird ritualistic endorsements of toxic gender stereotypes, that is – but also because they’re more authentic and in line with how people actually want to spend their time and money. “Today’s stag dos are less about old-fashioned gender roles and more about having the best possible time with the people who mean the most to you,” concurs Burke. That sounds like an ideal celebration to me. You might also just – whisper it – have a nice time.