I think you need to level up a bit. Usually people start the forest at level 3. By the end, after several battles with wolves, your level typically rises to around 6. This is a comfortable level for defeating the stag.
We don't like that currently our game can be played 'incorrectly'. It's not cool that we punish players for avoiding fights with animals in the forest, even though we gave them this option. We want to reconsider this.
But for now, good advice for you is to reload and defeat several common enemies in the forest, and then return to the stag. You should spend much less than an hour on this :)