Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Reaching the heights in a plum job
With damage by munties apparent in the woodland, a morning stalk fails to find the culprit but a plum orchard yields the perfect opportunity
As a newly trained commando soldier, you want to stand out. I was known to be quick. Regrettably, my reputation for speed was only on a computer keyboard.
I’d have preferred a good name for swiftness in something macho, but no. I tended to be called upon for the moments when touch-typing was required and no clerks were available. One such occasion took place at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan.
We had helped secure the base and were establishing forward operations into the Hindu Kush mountains, playing a game of hide-and-seek with Osama bin Laden. It quickly became clear that we needed an awful lot of kit that was in the UK. Urgent Operational Requirements needed writing at the rush. Who was the finest British touch-typist on camp? Step forward Captain Garnham.
Wish-lists included everything from quad bikes to underslung grenade launchers. The creative juices flowed, writing exaggerated reasons for their essential urgent despatch. I stopped short of the assault engineers’ request for Silly String of the sort found at children’s parties. Actually, it was useful for spraying into narrow cave entrances where tripwires might be stretched. We needed something extremely lightweight and colourful to rest gently upon them and reveal their taut presence. My mother came up
“Silly String was useful for spraying into narrow caves”
trumps for that one via British Forces Post. We tried not to trouble Whitehall for party accessories as a rule.
I mention the military wish lists because they sprang to mind this week. The trail had gone cold on a muntjac. My son, William, and I were on listening watch in a spring woodland. We were wondering how the munty had given us the slip. Everywhere, a thick curtain of green shoots, green stems, green leaf bud and green branches offered the most marvellous concealment for our evasive and diminutive quarry.
We crept on through the wild garlic, hoping that a little movement might betray the beast.
Seventeen eggs
We disturbed a hen pheasant that clattered away noisily. The rough scrape among the nettles that she revealed was a captivating sight.
Her precious cache of 17 eggs was perfectly concealed, the matt olive shells blending naturally into the dust and the undergrowth.
“Muntjac are omnivores you know. We need to protect those,” I observed. Poor William continued to suffer whispered lessons as we admired the carefully concealed nest. “Munties are known to eat eggs.”
This galvinised him to new levels of concentration. Neither of us likes the thought of wild birds’ eggs being eaten. Spring was in the air and suddenly nests seemed to be everywhere. A pair of greylags circled, grunting in the grey dawn. Shelduck were similarly amorous and vocal. Larks were beginning to warm up for their morning chorus.
A muntjac’s eating of eggs is arguably a minor misdemeanour. I’m more concerned about the damage they do to coppice, the game covers and especially to the orchard. We’ve finally finished pruning the apple trees only to see them being stripped, nibbled and frayed by a particularly determined beast. I watched him the other night when I was in pursuit of foxes. He even balanced on his hind legs to get the choicest shoots.
Strategy number one was the high seat in the pre-dawn gloom. Strapped to one of the alders that are a windbreak on the southern edge of the orchard, it affords a superb view over the fruit trees. It also offers fields of fire straight down the 150m where ancient chestnut woodland meets modern braeburns. I love the view, with the estuary in the background. It’s enthralling whether by day or night, summer or winter, rain, snow or sunshine.
William appeared breathless, clutching his binoculars. “I’ve seen one. It’s near the reservoir. Come on!”
I made the firearm safe and clambered down. Together we arrived just in time to see the beast slipping through a hawthorn hedge and into woodland. We followed. It moved without urgency further into the trees and was lost.
Our stalk continued and we discovered a patch of wild watercress in a ditch running through the wood. But no muntjac and no thermal sight to aid the hunt. On the footpath, a dog walker appeared. “It’s been good to see everything really early,” William observed. “It all feels different with no one else around.”
I concurred, sensing our hunt coming to an end. “Let’s just see if there’s anything in the plums,” I said. “There often is. We can make Mum a cup of tea and ourselves some toast on the way past the house.”
Warming glow
By now the sun was casting a pale, gently warming glow. The blossom had survived another night. Frost had been threatened but the mercury had stayed just the right side of zero.
We made a drink and took one to the still-sleeping members of the household, then set out for the plum trees as the final leg of our patrol.
The trees shone white and cloudlike, touched by the first rays of the sun, the dark trunks offering
a contrast to the billowing blossom. In its Larsen trap, the magpie was similarly contrasting in black and white, bouncing from perch to dead pigeon and back again.
“We might have something for him in a few minutes with a bit of luck,” Will suggested optimistically.
There are 19 rows of plums, each one set out as straight as an aisle in a church. From the north side of the orchard, we were downwind and surveying over our right shoulders as we crept from row to row, needing to kneel and even lie down as we looked at muntjac height. I prefer this end of the trees for a stalk. The rifle sits naturally in the left shoulder and I can manipulate it quickly and easily into the V of the stalking sticks or any other fire-position.
Row 1: nothing. Row 2: similarly unoccupied. Row 3: a blank.
Row 4: nil.
I had lost count of how many rows we had crept between when something reddishbrown moved. The muntjac raised its head to look over its left shoulder at the intruders on its patch. Both preorbital glands were visible below sharp black eyes and fur-covered pedicles. It stood alert, questioning. Its tail was up, ready for an escape. Its chest was obscured in the characteristic hunched position. There was only one shot on offer — straight between those dark eyes. I slipped forward the safety catch and squeezed the trigger.
The rifle let out a ringing crack despite the sound moderator. A nano-second later came the thump of a Hornady .223 hitting its mark. The muntjac’s legs buckled and it slumped to the ground where it had stood.
William and I both took deep breaths. Though the previous three hours had been spent trying to achieve this moment, nevertheless it still came as something of a shock. The deer in the woods had moved with such assurance and stealth that it seemed somehow unlikely we’d see another.
My observations about lacking the best equipment had also given us both the impression that an encounter with any quarry — let alone a healthy young buck like this — would be improbable. And yet, here it was, warm and still, lying on the grass. There was no exit wound. Only the slightest of blood trickles slipped from its nostrils and ears and one eye had been dislodged. All the wine-coloured flesh was undamaged — and there was enough for several meals.
The gralloch
I was out of practice with bleeding and gralloching but William’s interest in the process meant I was able to talk it through as much for my own benefit
“There was only one shot on offer — straight between those sharp dark eyes”
as his. He predicted correctly that a few choice morsels found their way to the magpie. We returned home bearing our trophy and telling our stories of the stalk.
Unfortunately, our Urgent Operational Requirement request has been rejected by headquarters. It was felt by higher command that £2,500 could be better spent on a number of things rather than a thermal-viewing aid. Some you win, some you lose; it was the same in Afghanistan. We didn’t always get what we wanted but we did see some wonderful countryside and we did occasionally find our elusive quarry.