Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Country Diary
In the pursuit of fallow deer, teaming up with fellow stalkers to work together or share knowledge can lead to excellent results
When you’re shooting fallow deer on your own, knowing when and where to be is a critical part of the puzzle in finding them, combined with a significant dose of luck. But when you are coordinated with a few people, the luck element reduces as a greater area is covered and the deer move around more.
A morning stalking on an estate near Bourne was a prime example of how a coordinated approach between three stalkers yields good results. With two of us positioned in high seats some distance from the block of woodland, a third stalker struck out on foot and, once he had made a shot and moved the deer on, the two of us in high seats were able to find luck as the herd searched for sanctuary in the next copse along. Between the three of us that morning, we had seven fallow deer, although that still seems small fry when the estate’s culling target for the year was over 300.
While coordinated stalking days can help to eat into those targets more quickly than individual stalking outings, by their nature they require cooperation between individuals who need to be available at the same time, and that is often easier said than done. That is where the shared knowledge of stalkers working in the same landscape can begin to pay dividends.
Out of range
Last week I was on the phone to George Burnham as I drove down the A43 towards Corby. He had been out the previous night,
“The buck was in the perfect position and my heart thundered in my chest”
sitting in a high seat, when he had seen a large group of deer wandering out on to a stubble field scattered with fledgling oilseed rape volunteers. For George, they had been far out of range and he had gone home empty-handed.
So, making the assumption that they would be in a similar place, I took up residence in the bottom of a hedge with a perfect view over two sides of the rectangular woodland. It was rather a tranquil spot, and lying there I was able to absorb the natural world around me. I watched pigeons floating over on a flightline and a hare lolloped up the field and stopped to preen itself just a few yards from me. A rain shower came across, but from my hawthorn palace, it barely registered.
The rain passed and the sun came out for one last hurrah as it beat a retreat towards the horizon, bathing the woods and fields in a warm orange glow. I couldn’t have been happier, but I was beginning to wonder if George’s sightings from the night before were going to pay dividends.
And then, in a piece of choreography any West End director would be proud of, a dozen fallow bucks all stepped out of the woodland and on to the field within about 15 seconds of one another. It was actually quite extraordinary; they were spaced more or less evenly down the side of the wood, each with their own patch of field to graze. Among them were some magnificent fellows, along with a few rather scruffy-looking prickets. The one second from the right was in the perfect position, and I could feel my heart begin to thunder in my chest. I watched it down the scope for some time before finally pulling the trigger, and the deer fell a short distance from where it had stood.
Patience and a well-thought-through evening had yielded the result I was after, albeit about 500m too far from the car and the beast was exhausting to extract. Without the knowledge from George, though, I probably would have taken up residence in the high seat at the far end of the field and, inevitably, I would have watched the deer from afar, well out of range.
Jamie Tusting is a keen Shot, fisherman and stalker who runs a small driven shoot on his farm in Bedfordshire.
The birds are at last starting to calm down. I had wrongly expected them to wander less and stay at home more this year with it being so dry, but the lack of rain and above-average temperatures didn’t seem to make much difference. I thought the drinkers would have kept them at home, especially when they were on the pellets and the ditches and streams were dry, but they didn’t.
Don’t get me wrong, it hasn’t been a terrible year for wandering — we have had better and we have had worse. They appear to be holding OK at the moment, but they are most definitely off the food and have been for a number of weeks.
Last year there was little about in the way of wild food, and they stayed on the hoppers right the way through. This year the trees have made up for it, and every branch is laden. I am not sure I have ever seen so many acorns on the floor, nor acorns so big.
The beech trees have had a good year as well, as have the sweet and horse chestnuts, and unsurprisingly, the wild food is more appealing to the birds than the wheat we are trailing and putting in the hoppers. They are eating some, but probably 50% less than they were at the beginning of September, and if the carpets of acorns and beechmast on the floor are anything to go by, it could be a while before they get back on it.
The maize is shorter than it normally is this year because we didn’t get the rain, and the lower cobs are another reason the birds are off the food. They are at head height to the birds. That’s better than having them a couple of feet off the ground, where the birds can’t see them, and because they can reach the cobs and eat the kernels while the maize is standing, we won’t need to swipe any of the rows out to give them something to peck at.
It should also mean that there will be fewer wasted cobs, and therefore less for the pigeons and crows to go at when we top it off next spring.
Another upside to having a shorter crop is that it will be less prone to wind damage.
At the end of last year, we had a couple of crops flattened in the November gales. With the maize being shorter, there is going to be less of it to catch the wind. The stems appear to be strong enough, and I am rather hopeful that if we do get a repeat of last year’s storms, it will still be standing the next morning.
Some of our birds are a different strain this year. The home-produced ones are French commons, and the ones we have bought in are a mix of commons, small blue Kansas-type birds and some large ringnecks, which were hatched from imported Polish eggs.
The Polish birds grew the quickest, coloured up soonest and had tails a foot long a month ago. The commons and Kansas-type birds have done OK, and I am not in any way disappointed with them, although they are a little behind.
To date, they have held the same and acted pretty much the same, and no one strain appears to have wandered more or less than any of the others.
What will be particularly interesting though, is watching how they fly and behave when we start shooting. We have some pretty high banks here, so I doubt there will be much difference in how high they fly. One strain may be keener to cross the wider valleys than the others, and one may be stronger than the others when there is a crosswind. There may also be differences in how they hold once we start, and how soon they are back in the drives when they have been driven.
I doubt there will be huge differences between each of the strains, and promise to update you towards the end of the season if there are.
“The Polish birds coloured up soonest and had tails a foot long a month ago”