Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Far from fallow
During a quiet month, some super heads are sent in, including a rarity, says James Sutcliffe
October has been a relatively quiet month on the measuring front. This is perhaps to be expected as, at the time of writing, the roe rut is well and truly over, with very mixed reports as to how intense it was, and the red and sika rut is just getting into its swing.
I would be most interested to hear from stalkers on the ground about how you have found the various ruts for our different species over the past few years. With wildly variable weather and subtle changes to the deer behaviour where I stalk, I think the last ‘fullon’ rut I had was around four or five years ago. While mildly infuriating when trying to get one’s male cull done, if nothing else it goes to show how changeable and adaptable our deer species are.
My ramblings over, let’s take a look at some of the heads that have passed through our hands over the past few weeks.
The one that immediately stands out is E Murrell’s gold-medal fallow buck.
Not only an impressive animal in its own right, but something of a rarity, as large fallow bucks are not something that we measure very often. That perhaps speaks to the difficulty of managing such a roaming species that gathers in such large numbers.
More golds
Other gold medals came in the form of C Wells’ Bedfordshire Chinese water deer and A Sullivan’s Cambridgeshire muntjac, with two bronze-medal roebucks from M Eyles and J Riley and a silver-medal muntjac from A Meehan rounding things out nicely.
As mentioned before, with the rutting seasons of our three largest deer species about to kick into gear, I fully expect we will see some fantastic heads submitted as the results of your hard work in managing your deer numbers.