My brief (and lucky) encounter with the Monarch of the Glen

THERE is a quiet, delightful little woodland park at the southern edge of my village here on lewis. the path winds through copses of hazel and alder past a lochan replete with contented ducks, and through pine trees and then broom, incandescent in flower, scenting the air with notes of vanilla and scorched coconut.

then you come to the edge of the Great Moor of northern lewis, where distant hills are silhouetted against lilac evening sky where, occasionally, a curlew sails by in stately flight.

But not last night. As i turned the corner and clear of the trees and the broom, and the island’s vastness opened up before me, there stood a stag. A young stag, trim, with tall and stately antlers, perhaps 20 yards away over the fence and in entire possession of the scene.

i was downwind of him, with my little dogs, and it took the stag some moments to register our presence. For seconds we beheld each other and then, not unduly alarmed, he made off.

it was no panicked canter, or the lumbering tramp of spooked cattle. A deer does not so much run as float, and with lovely economy of energy he took himself round and to the top of a little hill, eyed us again and then vanished. Only then did i draw breath.

it was not just that i had encountered a specimen of Britain’s largest wild animal – though it is extraordinarily rare to see a mature stag so near to human dwelling. it is the powerful symbolism of the stag throughout our lore and literature – from the Song of Solomon to Harry Potter’s Patronus. ‘Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether…’

At once i thought of a friend – athletic, watchful, with a Monarch of the Glen death-stare when irritated – whom i have long associated with the stag, and i messaged him later to report my encounter and that it was surely a good omen.

Stags prefer high and lonely crags and spend most of the year – in very wary association with other stags – well away from hinds. it is only in the autumn, ‘in rut’, that they move back into acres of their birth in search of a lady.

if you are in some far glen in those weeks of October and november, the roaring of a rutting stag is one of the most unnerving noises in nature – a bellow as much of rage as of lust. there is much come-over-here-if-you-think-you’re-hard-enough posturing by stags in rut, including fearful fights, sometimes to the death.

But one dominant stag always emerges and it is he and he alone who will impregnate most of the herd – until, in his age, he is finally dethroned.

Given the necessary machismo and muscle mass, few stags breed till they are at least five years old. Each spring they shed or ‘cast’ their antlers and grow an ever more elaborate pair each summer.

And, from July 1 to October 20, they are the subject of close interest from their only predator since, in the 1700s, we bumped off Scotland’s last wolves.

Deer stalking is the noblest, the most demanding and the most humane of all our field sports – clambering up hills for hours on end, often slithering on your belly, making as little noise as possible, at all costs staying downwind of your quarry and never knowing whether you will at last espy a herd of 200 deer or just one splendid stag.

You need a serious rifle – .270 or .308 calibre. You will only have one shot (miss, and by the time you have reloaded your quarry will be in a different county) and you want a clean kill. You aim for the heart, above and slightly behind the foreleg; the beast will drop like a stone, but should not be approached for five minutes.

traditionally, and for greater ease of transport, it is gutted or ‘gralloched’ immediately. Your seasoned ghillie – who does all the work of any importance, save for squeezing the trigger – often keeps the liver as a perk, and the ravens will appreciate the rest.

if this be your first kill, you are traditionally ‘blooded’ – a good smear of it on face and forehead – and your stag is borne home (traditionally over the back of a sturdy Highland pony, or ‘garron’).

it is a pity how little venison we eat in this country. Most of it we export: the Germans, especially, love it. Few know how best to cook this low-fat, high-protein and flavoursome meat. Most cookbooks advise long immersion in some disgusting marinade or other.

Forget the long soak. Venison is best cooked at a high heat, very quickly, allowed briefly to rest and served on very hot plates with a robust and fruity sauce. Port and redcurrant jelly flatter it best.

the trouble with stalking is that those who pay for a week’s shooting want only stags. to avoid serious imbalance in a species of complex sociology, estate staff must annually cull many hinds – usually through a fortnight in november.

UNFORTUNATELY, in recent years we have lost control of red deer in Scotland. there are far too many in some areas, nearly enough in others and, on some estates, so few stags as to make shooting lets unviable. Some have resorted to off-season culling, even pregnant hinds getting the bullet.

there is little political grip of the issue. Scotland’s elites are a thoroughly urban lot – and even on lewis there has been dramatic change.

two or three decades ago, you would not have seen deer anywhere near Stornoway. their manor was the mountainous terrain of Pairc and Uig. But sheep were then kept in huge numbers and grazed, for the most part, on the moor and hill. today there are fewer sheep. they are kept largely on the ‘bye-land’ – the few acres of croft proper around your house, on which you should be growing crops – and soft, dim breeds such as texel, Swaledale and Cheviot have replaced the traditional, hardy Blackface.

As a result, the moors are now so little grazed they are increasingly difficult to tramp, and grateful deer have been fruitful and multiplied. And where deer are out of control, that is very bad news for forest and woodland – threatening other denizens of the glades, from bluebells to dormice – and, indeed, for the motorist.

there are now more than two million deer in Britain – more than at any time since the norman Conquest – and they are behind at least 42,000 road accidents annually. Some put it as high as 74,000, as many go unreported. Scotland accounts for some 7,000 of these, with an average of 65 resulting in human injury.

But my stag, last night, was a threat to no one; a thing of grace and beauty utterly at one with his environment.

My friend was in amused touch this morning. last night, quite out of the blue, he was given promotion.