Hello deer

“There are small clearings within the wood, little sun traps with speckled wood butterflies and elderberry trees, and speckle-backed fawns dozing…”

COUNTRY SIGHTS AND SOUNDS
JOHN SHELLY

The thin trail led me down the hill away from the old stone-walled shed with its rusting tin roof and broken gable, through the abandoned orchard, where forgotten apple trees are losing their fight against the inexorable march of willow and alder, and over a hummocky, waterlogged slope to a grassy plateau alongside the river. Here the one trail mingled with others to create a mazy pattern over the long grass. A patch of soft mud held the slot marks of a red deer hind and those of her fawn, those of the latter scarcely bigger than the end joint of my thumb.
There was no indication as to which way the deer might have gone, but a nearby forestry plantation seemed an obvious place to start looking. The barbed wire that skirted the trees was weighed down with bramble and hung low from rotted posts. Numerous gaps in the undergrowth gave the deer a choice of where to go in and out. Inside the wood itself, a thick mass of branches made progress all but impossible. Even where I could make headway, the noise I made was enough to send the animals fleeing before me.
I gave up that idea and went back to circumnavigating the trees, preferring brambles and ditches to Sitka. To the south of the trees the amount of deer traffic was quite considerable; there must be a score of females resident hereabouts. There were no further signs of this year’s calves, though they will surely all have been born at this stage. It is often two or three weeks before they have the strength and courage to follow their mothers. No doubt there are small clearings within the wood, little sun traps with speckled wood butterflies and elderberry trees, and speckle-backed fawns dozing through their early days in the shade of burdock and cow parsley.
It was getting late in the day for any deer to be out feeding. I should have come out at first light; indeed, I had fully intended to do so, but the morning had been inhospitable, with cold rain and a thin wind that drove me back to my bed. Now it will be another week or ten days before I can get back. By then the calves will skipping about and, not having made the connection between the smell of humankind and imminent danger, not particularly wary. There is nothing else they have to worry about, apart from the occasional pursuit by an easily outrun wandering dog.
The hills of north Mayo might have been made especially for red deer and almost nothing else. Their long legs carry them easily over the rough ground, where even horses would falter. The countless stream valleys and gullies offer rich grazing, not merely for the lush grass needed for cattle to prosper, but for a wide variety of wild herbs – the perfect diet for strong bones and vitality.
It is hard work to maintain good pasture in these parts. Brambles and rushes make constant inroads into farmers’ fields and would, if left to themselves, make very short work about turning grassland to heath. I am never surprised that the area is sparsely populated. It is more surprising that anybody at all is prepared to do battle with the elements, to fight against an ever-encroaching wilderness, to endure the torrent of blood-sucking midges that plague every windless moment.
Yet I must confess to some affinity with this wild landscape, to the ancient curve of hills against an always changing sky, to the rushing, flooding downpour that turns those coloured slopes to white, to the long-legged mountain hare bursting from its form and the wily fox that must pick its living from the heather.
And, of course, to the deer; though they sometimes might not be there. We know where they live, but when we go to visit they are away on the other side of the hill. We know where they cross the road, but when we go to watch them they feel no need to go that way at all. We know where the stags spend the summer, where they gather for the rut, where they wallow in hag-holes to blacken and stink. Yet for the most part they are almost ethereal. They leave a never ending trail that leads us ever on, and just now and then they condescend to appear before our eyes, majestic and wild, and somehow timeless.