Stalking East Anglian fallow deer

Every year on our small family driven shoot in Hampshire, we see the odd roe deer, usually blundering out of a drive, scattering partridge before it and buggering everything up. In recent years, housing developments on three sides of the farm have effectively penned the roe deer in, with the Bournemouth to London railway line completing the ring-fence. The captive herd - and I use the term advisedly - has prospered, with numbers steadily increasing year on year.

 

We’ve never really been a stalking family - I couldn’t say why - and consequently, despite our volunteer game-keeper rolling one or two over each year, the numbers continue to grow, to the point where last season we counted more than 20 beasts on a single shoot day, including one group of at least a dozen. On a 900 acre farm, it is getting to the point where they need to be thinned out a bit. However, despite taking on the local rabbits with the .22 during lockdown, I don’t feel confident enough to simply head out with a rifle and a pair of binos just yet.
 

A herd of roe deer on the author's family farm, penned in by development. How many can you count?

So, when Frank, an experienced stalker, invited me to join him stalking in Suffolk shortly after the end of Lockdown, I was delighted, and having fixed a date I departed London one Friday lunchtime in August. The idea was that we would have a quick in-person meeting - our first and to date only one since the middle of March - before heading out to see what we could find, deer-wise. I don’t mind telling you that I was a bundle of excitement and nerves.

Things did not get off to an auspicious start, as almost immediately I became ensnared in the most god-awful traffic jam. This did not help my nerves and barring a few miles, the traffic remained dreadful all the way to Frank’s place. Eventually I arrived, over an hour late. Obviously the meeting was the least important part, so we rushed through that, and before long we were loading the rifles and other kit into the back of Frank’s truck.

 

En route, Frank talked me through the plan. “As soon as we get out of the truck we’ll need to be super quiet, as the last couple of times I’ve been down I’ve bumped into a muntjac doe right by where we’ll park. We’ll stalk up through a little wood and see if we can see her, up to one of the high seats, have a look-see, and if we don’t see anything we’ll formulate a plan from there.”
 

Before setting off into the woods we surveyed a few of the fields around us, as much to get our eye in as in expectation of seeing any deer out in the open, since dusk was still a long way off. Once my eyes had flipped over into movement-spotting mode we could see a number of hares out on the stubbles, a few squirrels darting in and out of the hedgerows, and far in the distance, a combine in a cloud of dust. Having done lots of glassing while on safari in Africa, I felt the in-built motion-detectors beginning to come back to life.
 

Anyone who has been on safari will find that the skill of motion-detection returns quite quickly

 

I was very impressed by the Swarovski binos Frank had lent me, even though they were, in Frank’s words, “pretty knocked about.” The clarity of the image was really a great deal better than my own binos, which I’ve had for more than 20 years. I’m trying really hard to resist a pun about ‘eye-opening’ here, and I have failed. The CL Companions are also incredibly lightweight and fit in your pocket so do not get in the way at all.

 

Frank hadn’t been wrong about the muntjac doe, for, as we trod carefully through the woods en route to the high-seat, we heard something. Creeping around a corner in the path, the clattering became louder and we caught a fleeting glimpse of a set of hooves disappearing into the bushes, the crazed rustle of said bushes, and then silence. Frank said a bad word.

The “high seat” was formed of a sort of box made of wooden pallets, perched atop an old WWII pillbox, with a couple of rusty folding chairs therein and a bit of camo-netting draped over the front. It overlooked an expanse of flat Suffolk landscape bisected with drainage ditches, with a sizeable copse over to our right. Out came the binos again, but despite glassing for 20 minutes, there was no sign of the doe, nor any other deer, for that matter. We (by which I mean Frank) formulated a plan to skirt the edge of the fields in an anticlockwise direction, bringing us to the copse, to circumnavigate this, and then loop back around another copse.

 

We hadn’t gone far when we spotted a deery-ish shape standing in a field of sugarbeet. Too far away for us to identify, I put the binoculars up to my eyes to see that it was an out-of-season Chinese Water Deer doe. Frustrating, but a positive sign.

 

Onward we went, and as we made our way through a gap in the trees to scan another field, Frank froze. He had spotted what he thought was a fallow deer in a patch of scrubby ground beyond the field. Out came the Swarovski’s once more, and I was able to confirm that not only was it a fallow doe, but that she was with a number of others, including at least one buck.

Now we had a decision to make: if we tried to skirt around them in one direction to get a shot we ran the risk of them winding us, and if we went the other we would be silhouetted against the skyline, owing to the flat East Anglian landscape. Opting for the lesser of two evils - being spotted rather than winded - we made our way as stealthily as possible up the track. At some point we lost sight of them, forcing us to pause and scan for them again with the binoculars. “George! There’s a few big bucks in there with them!” whispered Frank.

 

We continued our maneuvers, but when we stopped once more to check where they were, a forest of heads popped up over the shrubs, all looking in our direction. We crouched down, trying to put some cover - any cover - between us and them, but it was in vain. First one, then the whole group, bolted. Frank said another bad word. Had we blown our best chance?

 

Undeterred, Frank suggested that we retrace our steps and take the route we had previously rejected for the fear of being upwind of the fallow, reasoning that we might be able to catch up with them, for it was in this direction that they had run. This we duly did, but we never caught sight of them again. We did spot a single fallow doe, like the earlier CWD standing in a sugar beet field, but she was against the skyline so there was no safe shot.

We continued our loop and as we made our way back towards the truck we spotted another CWD, seemingly taunting us, but no legal quarry presented itself.

 

Although to head home without a deer to my name was a disappointment, there was something magical about the experience that I can’t quite put my finger on. The act of moving quietly, and thinking about one’s position in relation to the animal, the tranquility, and the simple fact of being alert to the wildlife around one, all add up to a captivating evening. I really can’t recommend it highly enough. A beast in the chiller would have been the icing on the cake. And besides, I can’t help feeling that had it been a successful stalk, it would have been a bit of a swizz, what with me being a noob and all. Now that I have a feel for it, I look forward to the return match, so to speak - maybe Frank will have more luck taking on the roe deer population in Hampshire than I did with the Suffolk fallow.

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