Shooting Times & Country Magazine
A blessing and a curse
When a good roebuck appears during an afternoon stalk, Patrick Laurie’s luck is finally in — but can he overturn a long-term jinx?
The last days of September are filled with the sound of geese in the north. Working around the farm as autumn approaches, the sky rings to the constant din of pink-footed geese coming over at all heights. Some are dropping down steeply to the Solway, but most are high up on the very edge of visibility, heading further south into England. You can certainly hear them at all hours of the day and night, but even when you strain your eyes and stare into the bright skies, these higher birds are hard to see.
Some migrant species appear as if from nowhere in the day, and it’s hard to believe they have travelled such long distances. Others drop in overnight and you find yourself wondering how long they have been there. But geese have mastered the knack of arriving in force for maximum impact. They are heavy, huge and noisy. You
can absolutely believe that these birds have just flown down from the volcanic landscapes of the distant north, and they cast a sense of change across the landscape with the same unavoidable clarity as the first frost.
Later in the winter, geese will arrive on regular flights to the marshes where I live. I’ll have a chance to shoot a few of them when they drop down into flooded pools and the swollen
“Galloway’s stags consistently feature in the record books, so command a high price”
holes where rainwater stands. But for now, these marshes still feel like a summer place; curlew and lapwings breed here, and careful grazing with my cattle is aiming to open up and improve habitats to maximise their breeding success. It could be a good place for wading birds, but a growing number of badgers in this parish sometimes makes my hard work seem futile. Habitats are heading in the right direction, but I’m still not seeing the pay-off in terms of happy, healthy young wader chicks that live to fledge each year. That’s a problem I have in common with many wader projects locally, and it’s clear that habitat management is really only part of the solution to the conservation of birds such as curlew.
With geese arriving and the cattle coming off the marshes for the autumn, now is a good time to scan for deer. I’m bound up by a number of contracts and stalking arrangements across Galloway, and these keep me busy all through the year. At times I’m desperately busy trying to keep up with all the plans I’ve laid, but late September and early October are an unusually quiet time for me. It’s the heart of the stag season, but while I have access to some good red deer stalking, I don’t have much to do with the stags here. I’ll have a hind or two in the winter, and perhaps a knobber in August — but the best of the stags are reserved for visitors.
Tidying up
Some of the stags in Galloway are abnormally huge; our stags consistently feature in the record books each year, so they command a high price among commercial clients. I’m not particularly interested in trophies anyway, but it does mean that the busiest time of the year is often rather quiet for me. I spend the time tidying up roebucks in the brief window before their season ends.
There have been a few good bucks down on the marshes over the summer. I saw them in glimpses during the rut in August. You can get a fair eye view of your local roe by observing the field margins at dusk and dawn. In January and February, you might see larger groups together in the frost. Some will become familiar, and careful watching will serve as a reasonable way to assess how many deer live in a place, but it’s only a guide or an indicator.
When the rut comes round, new deer spring up from all manner of unexpected places. You realise that it’s unusual to see the biggest bucks, often because they have learned to be crafty and lie low. It’s not unusual to see deer which run ahead of you on a walk, but remember that these deer are canny. It’s far more efficient to stay still and remain invisible. I firmly believe that deer don’t want to run away. It’s only an emergency measure, undertaken when something has gone badly wrong. They don’t realise that modern humans are effectively deaf and blind; they run because they think they are in danger, not realising that if they only stayed put, we might never have seen them at all.
“There’s always a margin for error, but if you’re seen and you keep on moving, it’s the end”
As roe deer grow older, they are less likely to run and more able to use the ground in their favour.
The biggest, most experienced bucks prize brains above brawn.
I’ve watched them actively hide themselves in fussily specific places and, wondering why they are so particular, I’ve pushed them off and lain in those place myself.
That was a useful exercise, and an extraordinarily revealing way to understand how deer can use a place. Next to comfort, some of these ‘beds’ are so perfectly chosen that the resting deer can smell everything upwind and hear everything downwind. But with the rut behind them, the masters simply vanish