Scotland’s Kiwi rugby coach and the thrill of stalking
VERN Cotter was barely out of short trousers the first time his father handed him a rifle and pointed him in the direction of the woods flanking their sheep farm on New Zealand’s North Island.
For some people, shooting is a pastime; for the Cotters it was a necessity. Hunting was to control pests or gather food and the woods contained – and still contain – packs of feral pigs which would wait for spring lambs to drop and then immediately devour them, ‘leaving nothing but their little black boots to suggest that they’d ever been there’.
For the Cotters, it was a zero sum equation – blast Babe or wrap up the ranch. So they shot the pigs.
Fast-forward almost half a century and when the 55-year-old countryman is not coaching Scotland’s rugby team, he spends much of his spare time climbing hills looking for wildlife.
‘Tell me to walk all day with a pack on my back in wind and rain, I’d say no thanks – but give me a rifle, tell me there is a challenge and the possibility to bring home food, I’m your man,’ he said.
Back in New Zealand, when he was not sea fishing he hunted boar, deer, mountain goats, possums, wapiti and chamois, with only the fabled tahr still on his bucket list. In two decades playing and coaching rugby in France, he shot boar from the Pyrenees to Paris.
Before Cotter headed back to France after the Six Nations, he wanted to savour hind stalking in the Highlands.
COTTER has shot more than his fair share of deer. He has filled his fridge with roe stalked in the Borders and pheasant and partridge shot near his East Lothian home, but he had yet to make the pilgrimage up north.
So in January, I accompanied him to Glenshiel, a 16,000-acre estate in Wester Ross just 15 miles short of the Skye Bridge. With 16 munros, no glen in Scotland is home to more peaks over 3,000ft.
As we wound our way through the glen the mountains towered above us on both sides. To our right were the famous Five Sisters of Kintail, the steepest deer forest in the country now owned by the National Trust for Scotland, while on the other side were the hills we were going to stalk – less celebrated but equally rugged, a mirror image of the craggy sisters.
We stayed the night 20 minutes to the north in the fishing village of Plockton.
Over a hearty evening meal, and as the beer and wine flowed at the Plockton Inn, our chat moved through his fascination with Harley Davidsons, rugby, life in France and his lifelong love of hunting to the next day’s stalk.
Satirised as ‘Stern Vern’, the Kiwi turns out to have a wide hinterland which includes a love of fine wines and food. It also became clear how much he has taken to life in Scotland.
‘Living here has been a real privilege in so many ways,’ he said. ‘It’s helped me understand my own country so much better because so much of New Zealand, and especially the South Island, was settled by Scots.
‘What I’ve found in rural Scotland is the same breed of introverted, humble and hardworking men I grew up with in rural New Zealand. They may be over 11,000 miles apart but the similarities between the two countries are startling.’
There are, however, differences between stalking methods and Cotter seemed bamboozled by several practices. The first was that most estates will not let you wander out where you like. The idea of following a stalker seemed almost an affront to his manhood.
Then there is the concept of dragging the carcase off the hill – New Zealanders are often dropped in by helicopter, so either take the best cuts and leave the rest, or remove the head and legs and turn the deer into a sling to be carried on the stalker’s back. The idea of dragging was greeted by eyebrows raised so high they threatened to disappear off his head.
The next day we met stalkers Colin Campbell and Paul Macaskil at Glenshiel Lodge. They are craggy-faced, fifty-something Highlanders and archetypal stalkers – men of few words who are virtually impossible to impress. Yet both nodded enthusiastically when Cotter unveiled his pride and joy.
‘It’s a custom rifle with a Swarovski Z3 scope custom-made for me by Joel Dorleac, the best rifle maker in France,’ he said. ‘It’s got a Lothar Walther barrel, a Jewell trigger, McMillan stock and refined Remington 7 action using 6.5 Creedmoor cartridges.
‘This is my perfect rifle for tough country, light and accurate, the one I’ll have till I die.’
Soon we were out looking for hinds, whose season lasts until midFebruary. For many, hinds are a greater challenge than stags because they are more skittish and travel in groups, so have more pairs of eyes to spot danger.
Finally, we pulled over and began to walk up a rough path towards the hill. After nearly 2,000ft of ascent, we were finally in position.
There were several stags wandering the hill so we waited until they moved so they would not see us and spook the group of eight hinds we had identified.
As we waited, we teased Cotter about his top-of-the-range gear bought especially for this trip – Laksen jacket and trousers, plus Meindl boots – and then quizzed Colin about his background. He was born nearby and has been on Glenshiel for 18 years.
SUDDENLY, Colin beckoned Cotter forward and quick as a flash he was into one of the hinds. A shot rang out, then another. But by the time we covered the 170 yards to where the deer had stood, there was only one carcase. The other hind, hard hit, had staggered round the top of the hill. We went off in hot pursuit, desperate for it not to make it over the ridge.
We found her 100 yards away and she was not going anywhere, yet the shot took an age to come; when it did the dead hind rolled 200ft down the hill into a burn.
Cotter had been stymied by a freak accident: when he took his second shot and emptied the chamber, the spent bullet casing pinged into the air and landed back in the chamber the wrong way around, then got stuck. It took serious knifework to remove it.
If he thought it was over, he soon found he was much mistaken. Dragging a deer is exhausting.
He was determined to drag one of the hinds the whole way and as he went redder and redder, veins popping out of his head, I feared his maiden drag could be his last. As Colin, photographer John and I took it in turns to drag the other hind, Cotter found that dragging on a mile of flat land is much harder than going downhill. It was a relief to get back to the road.
‘That was incredible,’ he said. ‘An amazing country, an unforgettable experience – one to remember for ever.’