Among the Deer E-Book

Duff Hart-Davis

• Herausgeber: Quiller
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 399

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

In this absorbing memoir Duff Hart-Davis looks back over fifty years of watching, stalking and writing about deer. From his first experience of fallow in South-East England to his many sojourns among the reds of the Scottish Highlands, he has spent countless hours in the woods and on the hill, learning more with every excursion. Along the way he describes some memorable characters and conjures up images of the many famous Highland Forests, including an account of how he once accidentally shot two red deer with a single bullet. Again and again he captures the grace and mystery of his elusive quarry, for which like all true hunters he has an abiding love

Leseprobe

Contents

Title Page

1. Call-Out

2. Born Killer

3. Amateur Stalker

4. Loch Choire

5. A Look at the Past

6. Mistakes

7. Hambleden

8. Knoydart

9. Stonor to Kathmandu

10. Glenfeshie

11. Wormsley

12. Strathossian

13. Glenkinglass

14. Lochaber

15. Letterewe

16. Today

Acknowledgements

Index

Plates

Copyright

1

Call-Out

MY LIFELONG FASCINATION with deer has had some unexpected consequences. One morning when we lived in Oxfordshire a farmer came on the telephone and said abruptly, ‘Here – you’ve got a big rifle, haven’t you?’

I didn’t know the man, but he was obviously in a state of some agitation, so I agreed cautiously ‘Well, yes – why?’

‘I need someone to shoot a steer. The blasted thing’s gone mad and it’s attacking its mates. People, as well.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll come down. Where are you?’

The farm was only seven or eight miles away, down by the Thames, but such thick fog was lying on the Chilterns and in the river valley that it took me half an hour to nose my way through the lanes. Eventually I arrived at the agreed rendezvous, and found a posse of half a dozen locals waiting by a gate.

‘All right,’ I said, loading a couple of rounds into the .300 magnum. ‘Where is it?’

‘Over there.’ The farmer pointed vaguely into the fog, and we all started to walk across a grass field – which, being down in the valley, was dead flat. Presently I made out a hedge running across our front, and on our side of it a single, hefty Hereford bullock pacing up and down as if preparing to put in a charge.

‘That’s him!’ said the farmer tensely. ‘Why don’t you shoot him?’

‘Give it a minute,’ I said. ‘What’s beyond the hedge?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Just the village.’

‘The village! How far away are the houses?’

‘About a hundred yards.’

‘Jesus! What about in that direction?’ I pointed to the left.

‘Nothing that way.’

At that moment I heard the unmistakable noise of a train rattling past in the fog.

‘What the hell’s that, then?’

‘Oh, it’s only the embankment.’

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘If I miss, this bullet’ll go for two or three miles. We need to get organised.’

After some manoeuvring, I got two men stationed as decoys, one on either side of the rogue animal, against the hedge. Turning back and forth, it could not make up its mind which to charge. By means of hand-signals I moved them inwards until each was about thirty yards from the bullock. I myself shifted to my right until I had it lined up in front of an enormous oak, with a trunk at least four feet wide. Even if I missed the crazed creature, I could hardly miss the tree. I then advanced until the bullock stopped pacing to right and left, and began to fancy me as a potential target. With everyone in position or out of the way, and the animal anchored by indecision, I lay down, took aim and put a bullet into its forehead. Down it went as if poleaxed, and within a couple of minutes it had been borne away hanging by the hocks from the fork lift of a tractor.

The farmer thanked me civilly enough, and I drove slowly home, pleased to have been of service. But the exercise had occcupied most of the morning, and I slightly hoped that in due course some small recompense might appear – perhaps a pound or two of steak. For weeks, for months, nothing materialised, and in the pub I began making jokes about how I’d shot only one steer during the season, but how challenging the assignment had been. Then suddenly there arrived a letter containing a note of thanks, together with a cheque for £25 – a considerable sum, then, and far more than I had earned or deserved. I was left feeling guilty, for I feared that my stories had found their way back to the farmer and caused him to over-react.

2

Born Killer

EVERY MORNING IN term time when I was seven or eight my sister and I would bicycle off across country to catch the school bus, which picked us up at a point on a minor road about a mile from home. For some of the way we were on private estate tracks, but we preferred to take short cuts along woodland rides, even though, in winter, the paths were often so muddy that we had to dismount and push. When we reached the main road, we simply wheeled our bikes into the trunk of a gnarled old beech tree which had been hollowed out by fire. In those carefree days there was no question of any grownup escorting us, or of us locking up our battered steeds when we left them. Returning in the afternoon, we would pick them up and ride home.

One summer day for some reason I came back on my own, and decided to cut through a wood which lay along the side of a hill. Much of it had once been coppiced hazel, but the bushes had been let go and grown tall, and at the far end they gave way to rough grass-land. As I emerged into the open patch, wheeling my bike, there stood a beautiful animal, broadside-on to me. Its chestnut-coloured coat, strongly marked with white spots, glowed in the sunlight. Legs and throat were white, and sharp little points of antlers protruded from the top of its head. Later I discovered that it must have been a fallow pricket – a second-year buck – of the menil variety, the kind with the strongest markings; but at the time all I knew was that it was a deer.

I was frightened, because the animal was so close, and so much bigger than me. Standing slightly higher up the bank, it looked even taller than it was. Transfixed, I froze and stared at it. For a few seconds the deer stared back at me. Then it wheeled round and bounded off, revealing a black stripe down the centre of its tail. Breathless with excitement, I leapt onto my bike and pedalled furiously for home, desperate to tell my mother what I had seen.

That was the start of a life-long involvement with deer – and for me their magic lay partly in the fact that during the 1940s and 1950s the fallow were rare visitors to the Chiltern woods among which I grew up, so that I had few glimpses of them. Some had broken out of parks during the Second World War, when trees had fallen through walls or fences, and no men had been on hand to repair the damage. The escapers had spread out far and wide over the surrounding hills, and their descendants survived and gradually multiplied in the wild, mainly due to the huge programme of re-afforestation which took place after the war – for the dense new plantations which sprang up everywhere provided them with ideal shelter.

Ignorance about deer was paramount in England at that time. There was no tradition of stalking, as in Germany, where elaborate rules had governed control of big game for centuries. British gamekeepers, foresters and farmers treated deer as vermin, occasionally killing them in shotgun drives – and many went away wounded with a scatter of inadequate pellets lodged in their hide. Others, caught in snares or traps, died wretched, lingering deaths. A note in my game-book for 25 April 1950, when we were rabbiting, records: ‘J. Cook shot at deer in the Heather, and it took a lot of shots to kill it’ – an episode all the more deplorable if the animal was a doe and heavily pregnant, as it probably would have been at that time of year.

From some ancestor I had inherited a strong hunting gene. Neither of my parents had it, and to my knowledge my father – the ultimate book-worm – only once fired a shot at a live target. That was on a Boxing Day soon after the war. When a cock pheasant appeared, sitting on the garden fence about thirty yards from the house, the whole family urged him to have a go at it. Food was scarce, and there on top of the ivy-covered palisade sat the makings of a delicious meal, its brilliant plumage gleaming in the sun.

My father reluctantly got out his ancient .22 rifle, left over from Home Guard duties, but he could find only one bullet. While he settled himself on a chair in his bedroom, two of us gently eased the sash window up, and after taking prolonged aim, he fired. Crack! The sights of the rifle may well have been awry. The old bullet may have lost power. The gunner may well have been put off by the whispered advice being offered from all sides. Whatever the cause of the fiasco, the sole result of the shot was that a second pheasant jumped up beside the first and sat on the fence crowing.

Young as I was, I found that little episode profoundly disappointing. I wanted my father to get that pheasant. I wanted to smell it cooking, and then eat it. I felt we had botched a golden opportunity.

I was lucky enough to be brought up in a remote farmhouse tucked away in the corner of the Nettlebed Estate – 2500 acres of forest and farmland, to which I had unrestricted access – and to my mother’s initial dismay, I turned out to be a born hunter. Later she accepted the fact, but at first she resented the way I abandoned her the moment I got home from school and took off into the woods and fields. My delight was to accompany Harry Brown, the gamekeeper, on his trapping and snaring rounds, and even more to stalk rabbits and pigeons on my own, first with an airgun, then with a single-barrelled 28-bore. In winter, major rabbit-shoots brought tremendous excitement, for I was allowed to go round with Brown the day before, stinking out – that is, dropping empty cartridge cases dipped in a noxious compound called Reynardine into the burrows, to push the rabbits into the open – and then on the day itself to act as a beater.

Because I spent so much time among grown men, I was teased a good deal, not least by a roguish fellow called Jack Cook – the one who shot the deer. Bright of eye and ruddy of cheek, he knew a lot about wildlife and never ceased to instruct me. When I told him I had been hearing a peculiar noise down the wood below our house, and tried to imitate it so that he could identify the source, he immediately said, ‘Ah – that’s a shrike. Bit like a jay. Hangs his prey up in the hedge. Rare bird, that. You want to get arter ’ee, boy.’

I looked up shrike in my bird book – and sure enough, there was a bird rather like a jay, a carnivore with a strident voice, which impales its food on thorns. Every time I heard the ee-aw noise I rushed down the wood in search of the elusive caller – and only after months of fruitless search did I realise that the sound was coming from a donkey, not in the wood at all, but on the farm the other side of the valley.

My principal associate was Reg Brown, son of the keeper, about my age, and an uncommonly good shot with his little .22. His particular technique was to go quietly up to a patch of brambles, stir the edge of it with his foot and watch intently for any slight tremor of a leaf or twig that would betray the movement of a rabbit. Even if only part of the creature appeared in a gap, he would unerringly pop a bullet into its head.

Some people might have thought me blood-thirsty – but when I was lurking about the woods and hedgerows alone I never wanted to shoot any animal or bird just for the sake of killing it. What I enjoyed was the thrill of pitting my embryonic skills against the highly tuned senses of wild creatures. Without realising it, I was giving rein to an instinct on which, in the distant past, millions of human lives had depended. Shooting for the pot seemed to me the most natural activity on earth, and I became a true country boy, insatiably reading and re-reading the Victorian classics by Richard Jefferies, The Gamekeeper at Home and The Amateur Poacher, and poring over the books’ dark engravings that so strongly evoked a world in which I felt I belonged.

I know that in twenty-first-century Britain the idea of shooting animals – deer, particularly – has become repugnant to a great many people. But to anyone in whom the hunting instinct still burns, it remains an entirely natural activity. To me a deer is a beautiful creature, certainly, but it is also a menace to foresters and farmers, on the increase, and delicious to eat – all good reasons for trying to thin out its ranks and land it in the larder.

3

Amateur Stalker

IN TIME – AFTER SCHOOL, National Service and university – I graduated to the pursuit of deer, which by then had become so much more numerous that they were beginning to cause severe damage to trees and farm crops. Their increase was reflected in the sweeping changes which came in with the passing of the Deer Act (Scotland) in 1959 and the Deer Act (England) of 1963. The new laws established close seasons and laid down minimum calibres of rifle that might be used for deer control. Also in 1963 the British Deer Society was formed with the object of encouraging humane management and greater respect for deer all round.

I read a good deal about the other species at large in Britain – red, roe, sika, muntjac and Chinese water deer – but as yet had no experience of them: my first deer were all fallow. The first full-bore rifle I used was a Rigby .275, borrowed from my godfather Peter Fleming. This was a weapon with a history, for it had been presented to him by The Times in 1936 after he had walked 3,500 miles from China to India – an epic trek – in the company of the formidable Swiss adventurer Ella Maillart, which he recounted in his best-selling book News from Tartary. In preliminary despatches to the newspaper he had made jokes about the inadequacy of the only powerful rifle which he had taken with him on the journey – an ancient and unreliable Winchester .44, with which he claimed he could not hit a barn door at forty paces – and after some lively exchanges in the correspondence columns of The Times the directors decided that in future he should be decently armed.

Peter never much enjoyed deer-stalking, with the result the rifle had had very little use. It was a fine weapon, nicely balanced but old-fashioned, with no provision for mounting a telescopic sight. Because I found that my left eye was my master eye, I always shot off my left shoulder, and this meant that I had to open and close the action by reaching over and hooking the little finger of my left hand round the knob of the bolt, to pull it up and back. This sounds awkward, but it soon became second nature.

The Mauser action, dating from the 1890s, was thoroughly reliable, but it had one defect in the form of a clumsy safety catch – a lever at the back of the bolt that had to be turned up into a vertical position for ‘Safe’, and pushed down into a horizontal attitude for ‘Fire’. I found that if I did not push it down quite far enough, it would jam the bolt: when I pulled the trigger, there was a tiny click, and the rifle would not go off. But then, the slightest further touch would release the striker, and the rifle would fire when I was no longer aiming correctly.

My first foray as a stalker was so amateurish that I took the .275 out without bothering to zero it on a target. I had heard that a small herd of fallow had taken up residence in a young plantation called Earl’s Wood, across the valley from home, and when I went out early one morning, I quite soon found them – six or seven does feeding in line-ahead along the ridge above me, silhouetted on the skyline, only sixty or seventy yards away. I could not distinguish one from another, or tell which was old or young: to my untutored eye they all looked the same.

I am still haunted by the irresponsibility with which I fired at the leader. Beyond the deer lay open country, but a main road and several by-roads ran through it, to say nothing of some public footpaths and bridleways, and I realised that if I missed, the bullet would curve over the top of the hill in a low trajectory and carry on for at least a mile. Even if I hit the target, the odds were that the round would go straight through it. I knew that the shot was inexcusably dangerous – but I was so excited by the proximity of the deer, and so determined to get one of them, that I squeezed the trigger.

Down went the doe as if pole-axed, but then it thrashed about on the ground, and, when it lay still for a moment with its head up, I had to give it the coup de grace with another bullet. Going up to it, I found that the first round had struck it about a foot above the point at which I had aimed, and instead of hitting the area of its heart had broken its back. Only when I went on a target later did I find out by experimentation how to align the open sights correctly. What I had done that first time was to hold the rifle so that the tip of the foresight was level with the shoulders of the rear sight, either side of the broad, shallow V. What I should have done was to settle the bead of the foresight right in the bottom of the V, and put the bead on the point I wanted the bullet to hit.

That was an unpleasant lesson, which I never forgot; but gradually, as I started stalking, I learnt more about ballistics and ammunition. I found there were two varieties of bullet available for a .275: the 173 grain and the lighter 140 grain, both soft-nosed as required by law, so that they mushroomed on impact and caused maximum shock. The first – the one I used at the outset – was relatively slow, with a velocity of 2300 feet per second and a looping trajectory that made it drop about four inches at a range of one hundred yards, and eight or ten inches at two hundred; the second was faster and flatter, leaving the barrel at 2800 feet per second, and was, I soon realised, just as effective. Not that I ever wanted to engage a live target at two hundred yards: in the woods, the range was more likely to be fifty yards or less.

Another important discovery was that the rifle’s trigger pressure could be lowered by a competent gunsmith. When I first used the weapon, the trigger-pull was set at 4½ lbs, which meant (as I said only half in jest) that it needed two men and a winch to make the rifle fire. This in turn made it all too easy to drag the weapon off the target to one side – and sometimes, in the excitement of getting a shot, nerves made it feel as if the trigger was locked, so that it would not pull at all. But with the pressure reduced to a little over 2 lbs, the weapon became easier to shoot and much more accurate.

I was surprised to find that I rarely got a shot lying down. As a cadet at school and then in the army I had done most of my rifle-firing in the prone position; but in woods, and sometimes in fields, trees, undergrowth or crops often blocked the view at ground level, so that I was generally obliged to shoot kneeling or standing. My accuracy improved greatly when I equipped myself with a six-foot bipod which had legs jointed together near the top, so that I could flick them apart at the bottom and steady my rifle on the fork at the upper end.

Besides finding out by trial and error how to stalk and shoot, I had also to master the skills of dealing with carcases. After any successful shot, the immediate necessity (I learnt) was to bleed the deer by severing its jugular vein or plunging a knife into the front of its chest. If this were not done promptly, the blood would congeal in the meat and give it a musty taste, rendering the whole carcase unfit for consumption. The next step was gralloching, also to be done immediately – the removal of stomach and intestines. Mildly disgusting at first, especially if the bullet had burst the stomach, the task became routine as soon as I learnt what all the various organs were – and on frosty winter mornings it was a positive relief to thrust one’s hands in among warm entrails. These one could leave on site, discreetly tucked away in a hollow or undergrowth, safe in the knowledge that nature’s self-propelled waste-disposal service – foxes, badgers, rats, crows, magpies and other scavengers – would quickly clear them up. Back home in the larder the beast had to be hung up, weighed and prepared for the butcher or game-dealer: head and feet off, heart and lights removed, chest cavity washed out.

Skinning was another skill that I had to acquire by experimentation. I have never forgotten the sight of a neighbouring gardener, whose boss had shot a deer, trying to get its hide off. He was lying on his side on the lawn, with his feet braced against the body, heaving at the skin with both hands and uttering fearful curses. Both he and the carcase were smothered with blood, earth, grit and blades of grass, and he had worked himself into a fine rage. He would have done better by far to hang the beast up by the hocks and pull the skin downwards, starting from the tail end.

It was when I came to butcher a carcase that I first fully realised the value of head-or neck-shots. A chest-shot is deadly, and the safest for a beginner, for the target is efffectively six or eight inches wide and high: even if the bullet misses the heart and hits lungs or liver, it will kill; but even if perfectly placed, it will probably rupture so many blood vessels that both forequarters are ruined: blood seeps through the membranes and invades the muscles, spoiling the joints. A head-or neck-shot – a smaller target, but no less lethal – leaves the main part of the carcase intact; besides, it knocks the deer down on the spot, whereas with a heart-shot, even if a beast is in effect dead on its feet, it may run thirty, forty, even fifty yards before collapsing, and on a winter evening a last charge of that kind, into a thick plantation, can make it very difficult to find.

Equally important, I began to learn the ways of the deer. I found that fallow are highly itinerant, and move around the country in small herds, sometimes only four or five strong, more often in tens or dozens. Being largely nocturnal, they tend to stay in woods during the day, and at last light emerge to graze on farm crops. Often the most effective way to cull them is to intercept them as they start back towards shelter soon after dawn – and to be out on the ground before daylight in winter has always been a magical experience for me. Darkness, silence, the familiar landscape shrouded, air sharp with frost, sky brightening in the east – I always think of A.E. Housman’s

Wake: the silver dusk returning

Up the beach of darkness brims.

Everything gives me the feeling that I am the first man on earth; and the most thrilling sight of all is of deer coming over the horizon in black silhouette against a crimson glow.

Fallow seem to be photo-sensitive: as the early light strengthens, they become increasingly nervous and head for cover, walking at first, but then trotting and occasionally breaking into a canter. A single, loud whistle may stop them long enough for a rifleman to get off a shot – but he had better be quick, because once on the move they will not hang about for long, and when in the wood, they are even harder to approach.

Deer are tremendous survivors, and equipped by nature with highly efficient senses. Unlike humans, who find it hard if not impossible to remain on the alert for long periods, they maintain their vigilance indefinitely, and without effort. As in India or Africa, where tigers, leopards, cheetahs and lions are a constant threat, in any group of prey species there are always one or two on the look-out for trouble. In Britain the deer seem to know that their only predator is man, and they watch out for him accordingly.

One of their defences is good eye-sight. Opinions differ as to whether or not they are colour-blind, and some scientists believe they can see blue, but no other colours; whatever the truth, except when snow is lying, pale-coloured clothes which reflect light are a giveaway in any British landscape, and it behoves the stalker to dress in drab. But above all, it is movement that attracts a deer’s attention. In the woods the temptation for a stalker is always to keep pressing steadily forward in the hope of finding deer; but no matter how cautiously you advance, they almost always see you before you see them. Usually it pays to sit still and wait for them to appear: your eyes, like theirs, will instantly pick up any movement, even the flick of an ear in the middle of a thicket – and if you remain motionless, they will not spot you. On the other hand, they seem able to distinguish the outline of a standing human being from other shapes in the wood: if you move along upright, they are away in a flash; but if you reduce your outline by crouching or crawling, they take alarm far less easily.

The direction of the wind is of paramount importance, for deer have phenomenal scenting powers, and can detect humans at least a quarter of a mile away. One faint touch on the air will make them uneasy, and a strong puff of wind will instantly put them to flight. Such sensitivity means that all stalking operations have to be conducted up-wind, or across it; countless careful approaches have been ruined by the breeze curling treacherously round some feature of the landscape and warning the deer of danger. Scent can also linger on the ground for a surprisingly long time. Once, sitting on the side of a hill, I watched a fallow doe come walking quietly down a grass track across my front in the bottom of a valley: when she reached the point at which I had crossed the path an hour earlier, she leapt into the air and bolted.

Some stalkers – among them that great expert on roe, Richard Prior – believe that deer have a sixth sense which warns them when a human being is dangerously close. I have never noticed this myself. I have been within a few feet of both fallow and red deer, and with the wind blowing from them to me I have escaped detection. High on a Scottish mountainside, on the rocky ground above the heather line, I and a friend were once trying to approach a stag when a little party of three hinds wandered over a ridge and into our line of advance, walking almost straight towards us. Caught in the open, we could do nothing except hug the ground, flatten ourselves among the stones and lie still. The hinds kept stopping to stare at us, bobbing their heads in curiosity, but they never deviated from their course, and they passed within ten feet, having presumably decided that we were nothing but a collection of odd-shaped rocks.

Woodland deer are not only highly alert, but also discriminating. Fallow and roe both differentiate between disturbances that may threaten them and those that are harmless. They will stand still to watch chattering, garishly clad hikers go past along a footpath, because experience has taught them that such groups are not dangerous; but the moment they spot a stalker wreathed in camouflage kit and creeping surreptitiously, they take off.

Similarly, they know the everyday noises of the wood – the keeper coming out in his Land Rover to feed his pheasants, the foresters thinning trees with chain saws – and do not take alarm; but one unexplained crack of a twig a hundred yards away will put them on the alert and probably send them flying. Their hearing is so acute that it pays a stalker to take advantage of any ambient noise, and to use (for instance) the clamour of rooks coming off roost at first light or the drone of a passing aircraft to cover any sound he may make by moving. Except during the rut, when the bucks start calling, fallow make very little noise. Does let off loud, gruff alarm barks if they are suddenly scared, but males rarely give tongue.

Another skill to be mastered is that of tracking. A skilled stalker can glean much information from slots, or footprints, also known as ‘sign’: what species of animal made them, whether it was male or female, how old it was, whether it was fat or thin, how long ago it passed this way, how fast it was moving, and so on. I myself have always found it difficult to differentiate with certainty between the slots of young fallow does and those of roe: both are about the same size, and roe’s hooves are generally more pointed, but often it is hard to be sure. Slots can also be very misleading. I once saw a group of eight mature fallow bucks walk in single file down a grass field and on through a narrow, muddy defile between hawthorn bushes. Just after they had disappeared, I went down to examine their tracks, and from the evidence in the mud I could have sworn that only a single beast had gone through the gap. There was only one large slot to be seen.

As time went by I made some interesting discoveries. One is that deer belong to nobody until they are dead. In law they are classed as neither game nor vermin, but as ferae naturae – beasts of wild nature, and become the property of a land-owner only when they are killed on his ground. In winter the prickly leaves of bramble bushes are fallow’s favourite food. They also like ivy – always said to be poisonous – and in cold weather eat a good deal of it without taking harm. They know that the hollow beneath the branches of a big yew tree is the warmest place in the wood, and often they stand there, looking out. They prefer to make their own paths through woodland, rather than using man-made tracks or rides, and in hill country they tend to follow the contours, moving along the slopes more than up and down. One speciality of fallow is to create play-rings – points at which young animals dash round and round a mound or an old saw-pit, apparently out of sheer high spirits, creating a circular or oblong track of bared earth.

An effective method of coming to terms with them is to sit up in a high seat, ten or fifteen feet above the ground – a practice much favoured in Germany, where Hochsitze are ubiquitous. Being airborne has several advantages. One is that it gives a good view over the surrounding terrain; another that firing down towards the ground is safer than firing horizontally; a third, that deer rarely look up above their own level, so that you do not need much concealment, and a fourth, that the wind will probably carry your scent away over their heads. A high seat is also an ideal platform from which to get a novice a shot. On the ground in a wood, opportunities are usually so fleeting, and the deer so difficult to pick out, that there is no time to explain to a beginner which beast you want him to shoot: by the time you have got him organised, the chance has gone. In a high seat, on the other hand, he should have a clear view, and a wooden or padded steel rail on which to rest his leading wrist, as well as plenty of time to identify the target.

Fallow groupings vary according to the seasons. In mid-winter males and females live together in mixed herds, but in February the bucks tend to separate from the heavily pregnant does and congregate in all-male gangs. In April they cast their old antlers and start to grow new ones – a process which uses up a great deal of energy, and for which there is no certain biological explanation.

Cattle and sheep, in contrast, keep one set of horns for life – so why should deer shed theirs every year? One theory is that rapid growth of new antlers dissipates the excessive testosterone which males build up as they put on condition with good feeding in spring and summer; another, that the annual renewal gives them a chance of replacing their main weapons, should one antler get broken in a fight. Whatever the reason, the growing bone is covered with soft, furry, dark skin known as ‘velvet’, which is full of blood vessels. When growth is complete, the velvet starts to dry, and the deer clean it off by rubbing on the stems of shrubs or young trees in a process known as ‘fraying’. At least the does benefit from this apparent extravagance on nature’s part, for they chew up the cast antlers and swallow sizeable lumps, thus ingesting valuable doses of calcium.

Like all other species except Chinese water deer, which have no antlers, fallow bucks grow bigger heads in every succeeding year until they are eight or ten years old; thereafter they are said to be ‘going back’ as their antlers gradually diminish. Stalkers use the age-old names for bucks as they grow up: in his first year a male is a buck fawn, in his second a pricket, in his third a sorel, in his fourth a sore, in his fifth a bare buck, and at six and afterwards a great buck.

Does remain simply does throughout their lives. In June they give birth to their fawns, often leaving them tucked up in long grass or other vegetation while they feed. Unlike roe, which habitually bear twins, they generally produce one a year. Especially in parks like Richmond, which is alive with members of the public, walkers sometimes make the mistake of thinking that a fawn has been abandoned because they see it lying on its own. To pick one up, or even to touch it, is the worst thing one can do, for the odds are that the infant is in perfect health; but if its returning mother detects human contact, she may well abandon it. The fawns grow at amazing speed, and in three months or so are nearly as tall as their mothers.

The climax of the fallow year comes with the rut in September and October. There is often some mystery about where major bucks spend their summer: for months on end they disappear, putting on weight in sequestered haunts, but then as the weather turns colder they prepare for action by coming down into lower-lying land, wandering along hedges or woodland rides and choosing spots at which they stand thrashing small branches off shrubs or trees with their antlers and scraping at the ground with their forefeet. Even if no one sets eyes on the perpetrators – for they generally come by night – they betray their presence by creating patches of clear earth stippled with footprints and surrounded by a scatter of broken-off leaves and twigs.

For the rut itself, a master buck takes possession of an area which has probably attracted generations of his predecessors. Even though deer rarely live more than fifteen years, some rutting stands are many generations old, and experts differ over what it is that makes such spots so attractive: some believe in the influence of ley-lines, but others maintain that more depends on the texture of the woodland. The deer certainly seem to prefer fairly open areas, with light cover overhead – and if the trees become too dense, or foresters clear too much of the cover, they conduct their business elsewhere.

On his chosen patch, often not much bigger than a tennis court, the master buck parades up and down groaning – that is, giving out loud, guttural grunts. Many a time a startled walker has come hurrying out of a wood with the news that ‘there’s a bloody great pig in there’ – and indeed the noise is like that of a monstrous sow or boar. It sounds as though the buck were snorting through his nose, but in fact the calls issue from a valve in his throat, and he makes them with his mouth wide open, stretching his head and neck upwards as he lets fly.

Deer of all ages answer the summons. Excitement builds as does assemble and mill around, giving out squeaky little calls. Their fawns, now nearly four months old, also swirl about restlessly, infected by the general tension. Lesser bucks lurk and dart round the fringes of the group, on the watch for quick conquests. But the master buck is on the lookout for them: every now and then he scatters them with a sudden charge, and the commotion also sends the does flying. Occasionally the big fellow gets into a real fight, locking antlers with a rival and wrestling so violently that the combatants go crashing sideways through undergrowth until the weaker animal gives way.

The noise and movement step up the pressure still higher – yet it seems to take an age for any doe to be mated. Again and again the buck makes a suggestive approach, but again and again the doe flits out of the way and evades him: no wonder, with so much chasing and fighting, that he may have lost a third of his bodyweight by the time the rut is over – especially as for the past few weeks he has ceased to eat anything except a few mouthfuls of earth.

For the stalker, the mating season brings a good opportunity for taking out injured bucks, or ones of poor quality: there is generally so much movement on a stand that all the participants show themselves sooner or later, and they are so obsessed with procreation that their normal vigilance is much reduced. Even then, culling is by no means easy, especially in the half light of dawn, when the action is often most brisk.

I once took out an experienced red-deer stalker who wanted to witness the fallow rut. Tony, the second Lord Dulverton, was no trophy-hunter; a tremendous expert on red deer, he merely wished to observe how fallow went about their affairs. But I knew that he was an exceptionally good shot, and I told him that if we saw any animal that I thought needed culling, I would ask him to shoot it.

Out we went before dawn on a morning of sharp frost – and there was no shortage of action. Bucks were groaning at various points in the valley, and I could tell from the depth of their voices that several of them were big animals. Their calls seemed to ricochet and echo among the trunks of a mature beechwood. As the light came up we moved quietly in on a stand. We ourselves were in the open, among big trees standing on a clean forest floor, but the deer were darting in and out of a thicket about seventy yards ahead of us. That whole patch of the wood was alive with movement, and every few minutes I got a glimpse of the master buck – a splendid, light-coloured beast, his flanks rippling with condition – as he emerged into the open in pursuit of some female and stood there groaning, with jets of breath condensing in the frosty air. There was no question of shooting him, for he was far too good; but presently I spied a perfect target – a sorel with a deformed, lopsided head, which also appeared briefly every now and then.

‘There he is!’ I hissed at Tony. ‘Shoot the buck on the left.’

‘Which one?’

‘The dark beast.’

‘Tail-on to us?’

‘No, no. He’s standing broadside.’

‘Where?’

‘Beside the thick treetrunk.’

‘Can’t see it.’

Too late. The sorel had vanished – and when this had happened twice more, I took the rifle back and shot the beast myself. At the boom of the discharge the thicket erupted. Fleeing deer burst out of it in a torrent. I had expected to see a dozen or fifteen, but here were twenty, twenty-five, thirty, in a hurtling cavalcade. Yet the maestro was not among them.

‘Have you shot the big buck?’ Tony asked.

‘Not at all. He’s in there somewhere. He’s just too crafty to show himself.’

Hardly had we stood up and started forward when out he came, a magnificent sight as he cantered off after his harem. In spite of the shock of the rifle shot, his instinct had kept him stationary and hidden until (as he thought) the danger had gone. Afterwards, in a letter of thanks, Tony apologised for his failure to spot the sorel when I told him to fire. He had very much enjoyed the morning, he wrote, but his attempt to single out the right target had been ‘like trying to shoot a ballet dancer while looking through a kaleidoscope in a theatre with most of the lights turned out.’ That and other similar experiences gradually taught me how cunning senior bucks can be, and I realised that it is mainly sheer guile which enables them to survive for ten or twelve years.

My own early ignorance was more than matched by that of some town dwellers. I once took out a senior business executive who, as we were creeping through a wood in the dawn light of a frosty October morning, tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, ‘What do they do if they see us coming? Do they lie down and bury themselves in leaves?’

‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘That’s exactly what they do – so if ever you see leaves going up in a fountain, let me know.’

His grasp of country matters was rivalled only by that of a woman from Essex who rented a holiday cottage in Worcestershire, but abandoned it after a single day. In a letter of explanation she told the estate agent, ‘The property was fine, but we had to leave [my italics]. I hated the way the sheep kept staring at me, and I thought the lavatorial habits of the cattle were disgusting.’

Since woodland stalking is mostly, by its very nature, crepuscular, one rarely meets anybody else – and only once in my entire career have I been intercepted while recovering a shot beast. This is not because I behave surreptitiously, but because I operate mainly at dawn and dusk, when few people are abroad. On that one occasion, however, I had shot a fallow doe at first light, and left it, gralloched, in the middle of a stubble field. When I went back to collect it at about 9am, I was just loading it into my jeep when I heard a drumming of hooves, rapidly growing louder, and up galloped a decidedly attractive woman on a piebald horse.

‘Who the hell are you?’ she demanded.

I told her and countered: ‘Who are you?’

It turned out that she was the wife of the new farm manager, recently arrived, and nobody had told her that I would be around. But that, as I say, was the only time I have been caught in possession of a body, and the encounter ended amicably.

4

Loch Choire

IN THE AUTUMN OF 1963 my parents-in-law, John and Diana Barstow, took the lease of Loch Choire (pronounced ‘Core’), a deer forest in Sutherland, and with characteristic generosity invited friends and members of their family to join them there for a week or two. Never having been to the Scottish Highlands, I had only a faint idea of what the place might be like, but I was excited by the idea of stalking in an entirely different environment, particularly as it was so far to the north.

The journey alone was something of an epic. Only the first section of the M1 had then been completed, from St Albans to Birmingham, and for a motorist heading north out of London only the first part of that was any use. Thereafter it was a question of weaving one’s way through town after town, city after city, driving through the night and into the next morning. At the time our family transport was a pale blue minivan, which (as anybody who owned one will remember) was very low-slung and had minimal springing.

For some reason my wife Phylla (short for Phyllida) had to stay behind for a day, and then fly up to Wick to join the party. Thus I was faced with a marathon drive on my own. Details of my progress have mercifully faded – except that at about four in the morning I failed to notice that in one of the Highland towns through which I passed – perhaps Pitlochry – the road had been dug up. Without noticing the temporary barriers, I suddenly dropped at least a foot into an excavated area floored with rubble. The impact, combined with fright, woke me up thoroughly, and I pressed on.

By the time I had cleared Inverness, with three hours still to go, I was hardly in a state to appreciate the scenery of Scotland’s north-east coast; but spirits revived when at last I turned inland at Helmsdale and went up the single-track road that follows the celebrated salmon river, with the sinuous strath growing ever wilder and more desolate.

Excitement mounted as I reached Kinbrace, a one-horse halt on the railway, and turned westwards into the hinterland. Huge sweeps of dun-coloured moor stretched away on either side of the road, without a house in sight, and on that fine morning dove-grey cloud-shadows were sliding softly and silently across the empty land. Four miles on I came to a little cluster of buildings, painted white and green, which I identified from the map as Badanloch Lodge.