Woodlife

If I tell you that normally nothing can get in my woods that’s larger than a fox, you will just have to take my word for it. I’ll leave you to work out some hypothesis as to why this is. There are in fact badgers, foxes and mutjac, but they have been there for a considerable number of years. Imagine my surprise when over the holidays I saw these tracks (photo above). Larger than a muntjac, possibly a Roe deer and probably a Fallow deer. Strangely enough, I didn’t think too much about it at the time. I thought that I had just made a mistake. It’s the kind of mind set you get into when you just know that there can’t be any of these animals in these woods. Other local woods, yes. These woods, no. Your mind just won’t accept it. This, I would suggest, is not a good attitude to have when nature is at her most confusing. But the more I thought about it, the more I knew that these weren’t just normal mutjac tracks. Today I was going to find out.

Armed with my tracking stick, day pack, cheese and small flask of tea I set out in the pouring rain to find out exactly whether I had a newcomer in the woods or not. I quickly found the original tracks and measured them. These have got to be Roe or Fallow deer. And there were lots! The tracks were quickly filling up with water from the rain, so I followed the tracks, which were quite easy to spot in the mud. They were in fact so easy to see that I didn’t really need the tracking stick. I left it stuck in an easy to find spot and extracted the camera from my shoulder bag. I had swapped the beige canvass shoulder bag for the more waterproof German army gas mask bag. I’m please I did otherwise the camera would have been ruined.

The tracks led into the wood, but I felt compelled for some reason to follow the mud path along the outskirts of the wood. I had read about browse lines, so I thought I would keep to the outskirts for now. This decision turned out to be a good one. 50 yards ahead and to the right, a head popped out of the small bushes. I froze… it froze, then there was a flurry of movement. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Fallow deer leapt out of the bushes and into the wood. 5 Fallow deer! It all happened so quickly, I couldn’t tell male from female or distinguish any sizes, except for one. Amazingly, she ran back across the track and back to where she came and finally walked back out nonchalantly to face me on the path. I was almost shaking as I slowly brought the camera up to the aim. Gotcha! (albeit a very damp and blurry looking photo). We stared at each other for a good minute until the other 4 came bounding (and I mean prancing) back out of the woods and into the bushes whence they came and out of sight.

It was now my mission to track them. However (and to cut a long story short) despite an hour tracking getting wetter and wetter and colder and colder, I completely lost them. I’m pretty sure they ran completely out of the woods and across the nearest field. I was still elated to have seen them and to have proved my theory that there was indeed something in the woods.

It was time for a bit of lunch. I hadn’t brought the tarp and it was still raining hard. I had brought a poncho, but hadn’t worn it because of the noise it makes while walking. I rigged it up as a quick shelter and sat down to a cup of tea and some cheese. It wasn’t long before I realised I had made a fundamental error. The hood from the poncho hadn’t been tied and I hadn’t angled the poncho to let the rain run off. The result? A full soaking despite the excellent water-resistance of the Tilley T3. Now I was very wet and it wasn’t long before I was getting very cold. The van was just a minutes walk away, but I decided to make this a little test of what I would do if I was really stuck in this situation.

You can read about what I did (and what I didn’t) mid week. Thanks for the visit.

Pablo