I know what you might be thinking. More Deer photos – more tracking stories. Well, I just can’t helping bumping into them when out and about. Both Deer and tracks.

On Friday, I found some more Muntjac tracks in soft mud and managed to follow them for about 40 meters. Although this was virtually all on soft ground and thus easy to follow, it was still a significantly longer track than last week. Muntjac tracks around my local wood aren’t all that common, so I’m now building up a picture on exactly where they go and what they do.

On Saturday I went to Lowt’s wood. The Fallow deer where out and about. A couple of individuals were standing in the middle of the field. In the wood, I crept up on 3 at the entrance to the wood and tried to follow them as they ran off to the east. I ended up at the far end of the wood with only a quick glimpse of them through the brush. At the far end of the wood I stumbled on a huge Badger sett excavation. I was able to study the Badger tracks in sand. It looked as though a bulldozer had been at work at the entrance of the sett.

I had lunch again trying out the Bushbuddy this time in Trangia mode, which worked well. I walked back along the length of the wood with the echos of shotguns starting up all around me. It’s now well into pheasant shooting season, and my most recent trips outside my own local wood has been dogged by the noise of the guns. Most woods in Essex are sorrounded by fields. I have no objection to pheasant shooting, but I am a little unsettled by the noise and I’m not that confident in ability of the shooters’ accuracy. I have experienced first hand how far shot travels and how much it spreads as some shot landed on our patio window not so long ago.

I decided to bug out of Lowt’s and return home. It was a bit of a shame as I was going to go on to do a few Bushcraft type projects. Although I had had a fair bit of succcess with tracking, I was feeling a bit unnerved.

This spread over to today where I haven’t even left the house. The clocks have now gone back to GMT from BST which has effectively curtailed evening rambles. Great idea for summer William, not so good for winter when we all have to revert. The wind and rain is at this moment dashing against the windows and winter is certainly just around the corner. I suppose you do get days like this and this is the first weekend in months where I haven’t been out every day of the weekend. I wandered around the house getting under Mrs P’s feet and eventually retreated into the study where I mucked about with rucksacks and shoulder bags.

It’s now time to get into winter mode, and winter mindset.

See you soon.

Pablo.