Recreational Der Stalker and Guest Contributor Araba Cole stalks Roebuck
Spring gives no end of astonishment as we wander our ground; a time of appetite and of pursuit.
As I walked up the track there was movement ahead; a hare bounded out, to my
delight. I always think of hares as a good sign; if hares are moving, deer are moving,
like distant cousins, envoys of the same deity of speed and grace. Another followed
it, sharp sudden movements, then an abrupt halt as the first - I suspect a female -
reared up on her hind legs, holding her space against this suitor. Something passed
between them, and they were off again, up the track. As I walked up the same way
they kept disappearing from view ahead of me, far more interested in each other
than in me, ambling along behind them, and me far more interested in deer.
For months it has been the dreary grey umber of winter, punctuated, perhaps by
those cold clear bright days where the air itself sears bare flesh and sunlight is as
hard and as cold as the frost our boots crunch through. Hinds and does, hardy and
determined, putting our skills to the test as they conserve calories, incubate new life
and wait for better days to come.
And now suddenly, evenings luscious and heady with blooms and new leaves,
stretch out ahead of us, longer and longer and longer as the days go by, awash with
riotous colour; fields of oilseed rape, a week ago ankle high, now a rippling tide of
yellow waist high. It taunts the hunter; it could hide a hundred roe deer and you’d
never know it.
Where once the wind howled down the sharp fold of land cut by the babbling burn
over millennia, the woodland is now still and warm, bronze bracken crushed and
rotting, and when that spring shower comes in, I take refuge in the fringes of the
sitka plantation. In the silence, listening to the drip of water, skin prickling a little in
the warmth having worn one layer too many, and waiting for the rain to pass.
Lovely as those conifers are in the early and late hours of spring, nothing compares
to woodland of birch, rowan and hawthorn, bursting into life after winter. There is
magic there, to spy a deer picking her way through the shadows, dappled sunlight
slipping over her newly moulted coat; these are the woods of fairy tales and myth.
Birdsong in the sunshine, blossoms and pollen drifting in the warming air. It, too, was
plantation once - twenty years ago perhaps - and now moss, devouring damp
stumps and blanketing old stone walls, has given way to heather in places, given
way to young hardwoods. I think of our work as deer managers protecting woodland,
think of where it will bring us to, these lush biodiverse habitats where deer, too, have a home. I listen to it thrum with life, before I step back into the cool gloom of the
conifers, uniform green and plush.
The evening was glorious, the ground drenched in sunshine, warm as the sun
lowered in the West. In such conditions, my thermal was of little use; sun-soaked
tree stumps and rocks bright as any living thing. Nonetheless, I spotted a deer
feeding on a mound just in front of a treeline. Wanting to close the distance, I stole
forward between the young trees, slowly, picking my way around the broken
branches and rotting logs that littered the clearfell area.
The cover fell away leaving me lit up by the low sun, and with the flickering wind the
buck was onto me: not alarmed, but just concerned enough to amble away over the
far side of the mound. Undeterred and fancying my chances on another deer further
along the treeline, I kept up my slow, careful passage until I reached the mound,
keeping it between myself and my quarry. Until the brown shape no more than ten metres ahead of me moved: it was a roe doe. No statue was more still than I was in that moment. She looked at me, took me in, stared me in the face. And then kept browsing.
Such an encounter is the marker of the change in season: such a thing would be
impossible when does are what we’re after. I remain convinced deer know when they
are game and when they are not. But the moment passed and she realised what I
was. Indignant, she recoiled, bounded across the burn, looked back one last time
and went off shrieking, I fancy taking every deer in the wood off with her.
Of course, the First of April sees us switch our focus to roe bucks; those flash,
handsome beasts, proud with the antlers in hard horn by May, the older ones
languorous having shed their velvet first. Where I’d watched does browsing around
young trees and slipping off before dawn, the buck came striding into view in the
morning light seeking not food but low branches to thrash his antlers against; he
prowled this patch of land, ever-moving, vigilant, with a fine crown of horns. There
was no safe backstop, and even if there was, would I have taken the shot? Or would
I have simply indulged in that hunters’ privilege, not only watching nature erupt into
life once more but taking a place within it.
Araba Cole - Guest contributor and recreational deer stalker. Find more of her writing at: To Take a Deer | Araba Cole | Substack
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