Close encounters

“The buck’s antlers were high and wide, lacking the depth of palmate that typifies a well-bred animal, but quite adequate for his purpose”


Country Sights and Sounds
John Shelley

THE wind, for once, was constant, easing off the lake at a steady pace, unseasonably mild and soft. It carried skeins of cloud, long strings of broken cumulus that had their birthplace somewhere beyond the Atlantic coastline, sunlit, shower-filled clouds with pastel-rainbow sides. It carried a variety of smells, too; the richness of autumn woodland; the fresh damp of newly-flooded meadow, and through this the thick, cloying, goat-like half-stench of a fallow buck. I could hear his almost comical, guttural croaking above the musical sounds of water pebbling at the lakeshore, and worked through the trees toward the place I thought he might be.
There were, in fact, at least two male fallow deer somewhere ahead of me, the one that was my intended target, and another, slightly more distant. Their voices were distinct, one hard with a note of determination behind it, the other more persistent and on the move continually.
I had already made the acquaintance of the dominant buck in the area twice in the last week. One evening three of us had stalked to within ten paces of him, and had been thrilled to watch him at work guarding his rutting stand. He had called almost unceasingly. At close quarters his voice was powerful, with a deep resonance that reached far beyond our ears. One of the females he had attracted almost gave the game away when she spotted us and scampered away through the hazel stems, but the other deer had taken no notice. Another passed so close we could almost have reached out and touched her before she, too, caught our scent and slipped away into the dark wood.
The tumbled limestone rocks that we sat on were most uncomfortable. It wasn’t long before we had to start shuffling about and, of course, then we were spotted. Our buck was astonished when he realised he was not alone. He stood and stared for ten minutes or more, giving a series of gruff barks and shaking his head in a mixture of disbelief and bad temper. His antlers were high and wide, lacking the depth of palmate that typifies a well-bred animal, but quite adequate for his purpose. His head was dark, almost black, displaying the trait of melanism that seems to dominate the fallow in this area. The local culling trend is to try and weed out the darker animals, and thus restore a more traditionally-coloured race of deer; I wouldn’t have given much to be in his shoes. He seemed torn between a desire to defend his position of dominance, and his natural tendency to put a bit of distance between himself and ourselves. In the end he chose the latter course and disappeared.
That close encounter had been no small thing. I had not intended to get quite so close. Twenty paces would have been an adequate and comfortable distance to observe him, but in patrolling his territory he had made the last move. I never knew a wild fallow deer to really threaten anybody, but that is not to say it could never happen. It is wise to be prudent.
Now I had returned alone to observe in a more circumspect manner to find the beast working up quite a temper. He thrashed at the bushes and croaked his ownership of this woodland corner. I edged closer, keeping downwind and out of sight. When he fell quiet I thought I had been discovered, but the sound of clashing antlers shortly came from the field beyond. A small group of does, six or eight in number, ran in a half-panic from the battleground, and then ran back to see who might be their new suitor.
I could see nothing of the combat through the densely-packed hazel rods. The battle continued unabated. If I moved into the blackthorn ahead and to the left I might have a grandstand view…
I was halfway there when a yearling buck plunged from that very place and fled as if his life depended on it. An immediate silence fell over the area, and when I got to look out from beneath the thorns there wasn’t a deer to be seen.
I sat quietly for a few minutes, listening to the water and the wind, thinking that I might come back, tomorrow, for within a week the deer will have their business done and the action will be over for another year.