Foxes and Pussies

Although we are the middle of our 'foxing season', you haven't heard a lot about it. That's because it has been very quiet indeed. So far we've only found 2.5 dens.

If you're wondering about the 0.5 it's because we had a dog fox move onto the far reaches of our ground with a couple of cubs. They were survivors from a den being dealt with by a neighbouring estate.

But, all in all, it's turning out to be a strange season. We are catching few stoats, seeing few 'hoodie' crows, and finding very few foxes. 

There are a couple of foxes been spotted up on our North march too, but they also have eluded us. So far. Unfortunately the weather has broken down again so we're struggling to get good visibility for spying at first light.

We're also catching up with a few maintenance jobs around the place. Last Friday we were sorting up a footbridge, waaay out on the hill when I spotted a moth on one of the handrail uprights. It was bigger than any moth I'd ever seen.

As I had the email address of a chap who comes up here trapping and studying moths, I took some pics and sent them to him. I was surprised that, when he got back to me, he'd told me he'd only ever seen one before and asked whether he could post a pic on the Butterfly Conservation website. (http://butterfly-conservation.org)

Apparently it's called a Puss Moth. You learn something new every day.

Surprise!!

A few years back I was lucky enough to be offered the chance of a job exchange. The result was that I spent 3 months working on a remote 100,000ha game reserve on the edge of the Kalahari in South Africa.

From day one, it was incredible. I darted lions. I tracked rhino. I counted game from a low-flying helicopter. I helped in the live capture of 1500 head of game.

To call it a once-in-a-lifetime experience falls far short. It was surreal, like the plot of a cheap novel. But it happened.

The exchange was organised by my employer and one of our regular shooting guests. I spent a lot of time wondering how I could possibly show my gratitude for this amazing chance. The only answer I could come up with was to keep them up to date with my adventures. I emailed a daily blog.

As my time in the Kalahari went on, more and more people asked to be included on my mailing list. On my return to the UK, I was persuaded to keep writing.

My African adventure is 4 years behind me now. However it was such an amazing thing, that I can't bear for it to be over. It HAS to have been life-changing.

Yet, I feel the same. The only difference is that now I am a writer. My benefactor had my African blogs made into a coffee-table book. As I result of that, I was offered a regular column with 'Scots' magazine. A regular slot in 'Sporting Rifle' has since followed.

It might be small beer (I really don't know) but the fact is the ripples from Tswalu are still spreading out through my life.

If you're a regular visitor, you'll notice that my blogs had 'stalled' of late. Part of this is that I thought that, after 3 years, there wasn't much left to say. Part of it was also that it was getting a bit onerous. And part of it was that I could never find an answer to the question "...and why exactly am I doing this?!"

Well just recently there have been developments. The estate I work for- Invermark- is trying to develop in some new directions. One being wildlife tourism. And this blog is being pushed as a 'marketing tool'.

I still find myself asking "...and why exactly am I doing this?" because- at the moment- there seems to be nothing in it for me.

Apart from keeping those ripples going.

Right Out in a Whiteout

Since my last post, I've been stalking hinds every day. And every day I've been attempting to get within shot of herds of 2-3-or 400. It's difficult at the best of times but when there is snow on the ground there is even less cover. I reckon I've crawled the equivalent of Lands End to John O' Groats.

So today was a welcome break from the norm. We had quite a lot of snow fall yesterday and we reckoned it would be dense enough to carry the weight of our machinery. So we went looking for foxes.

Two teams went out- one pair in the tracked argocat, the other pair (myself included) on the snowbike.

As we suspected, the going was heavy until we got a good bit of height, after which the machines were going well. It didn't take long to cut the first set of foxprints.

We tracked the prints for miles then, inexplicably, came across two lonely figures walking the empty wastes. It turned out to be two keepers from the neighbouring estate. They had followed another set of prints for even more miles from their estate. We met where the two foxes had.

After a chat, we left them to hitch a ride home with the argocat while we continued tracking. All the time, the day got greyer and any rises and falls in the ground became more and more difficult to read. Skiers call this 'flat light'- maybe because that's how they invariably end up. For me driving, it meant maximum concentration every yard of the way.

The prints eventually climbed up the steep face of the second-largest hill on the place. The bike wouldn't look at it. Gus reluctantly gave up his pillion seat and started tracking on foot. I made my way round the foot of the hill to see if I might find the fox/ foxes lying up on the lee slope.

It didn't take long to get round there but by then the poor visibility had become no visibility. I sat and had my piece (lunch) huddled behind the bike in a feeble attempt to escape the bitter wind and stinging flakes of snow.

Eventually the radio crackled to life. Gus exclaimed that he was suffering no such problems. Plunging up to his fetlocks in snow was keeping him warm enough apparently. However the foxprints were barely discernable and what remained of them up on top of the hill were drifting in quickly. It was time to pull the plug.

By this time the visibility  had deteriorated so much it was like being inside a giant lightbulb. Albeit a very well ventilated lightbulb. I wondered how we were going to find each other again. Even the sounds of fired shots wouldn't carry far in this wind.

As it was, Gus came down off the hill in roughly the right direction. And fortunately he was on the ball enough to spot when he intersected the snowbike tracks (which were also starting to get obscured). All I had to do was backtrack until I found him. It was quite a relief when I eventually picked up his figure looming out of the gloom.

He clambered back onboard with great enthusiasm and I was most pleased to be heading for home. Within twenty minutes we had dropped out of the mist but the journey back was still long and slow. And the more height we dropped, the heavier the going got and the more I had to wrestle the bike.

We got home with a couple of hours of light to spare and I was feeling well and truly knackered. Maybe not as knackered as I would have been if I had been out on my skis (as has so often been the case). And certainly not as knackered as our two neighbours, I would guess.

On The Silver Screen

Well I managed to survive until the Christmas break. Out of the last 6 working days, 5 have featured mist, wind and lashing rain.

On the last stalking day I managed to bag 4 beasts. Although it was a refreshing change to get more than one shot off, it did come at a price. That price was that this required 2 trips with the horse.

 I got so cold waiting for Eric and Fergus to return that any distraction would do....like taking pictures of  my misery, for example.

On a similar note, I had a filmmaker-Rob- out with me a few weeks back. He was doing a promotional video for wild venison. As luck would have it, the day he came out was a fair representation of what a days hind stalking entailed.

As we trundled away from the larder in the morning, Eric asked as to whether he had a rain cover for his (rather expensive looking) camera. When he responded in the negative, Eric offered to fetch a bin-liner.

By the time we came off the hill, that bin-liner was in tatters. Those tatters, however, were still being carefully wrapped around the camera after each sodden attempt at a take. By the time the stalking party was down on the flats of the glen, the misted lenses rendered the camera useless. Which was a pity as a pair of salmon were putting up an excellent display of spawning in a shallow pool just a few yards away.

As it turned out Rob returned for another day and managed to get the shots he needed. You can get a sneak preview of the drier parts of our first outing on http://vimeo.com/53165007 . Hopefully I'll be sharing the second outing with you soon.

Finally, I'd like to thank all you folk out there in cyberspace for your continued support. My last blog must have had an air of despondency about it. It garnered a few comments of encouragement which were just the tonic I was needing.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and all the best for the coming year.

 

Water Biscuit

Those of you who live in the uk will need no telling about the weather we've had this last week. Flood warnings are in place the length and breadth of the land.

For us, Monday was diabolical. Not a day for the hill at all, really. But with us falling behind further and further with our hind cull, I felt I had to go out and try.

Tuesday turned out to be even worse. And I had a guest out that day. I'd like to think we'd have had a result as well but the wind changed on us when we were only 200 yards of the beasts. Then later mist obscured another lot just at a crucial time. Excuses, excuses....

But Thursday really took the biscuit. And what a soggy biscuit it was. Again I had a guest and we were fortunate that, although we had lashing rain, the cloud base remained high enough to be able to see what we were doing.

As it was, we got a couple of beasts and a good soaking.

As I write this I can see a greyness to the very tops of the hills. But we're needing a lot more snow than that if the deer are to be shoved in to our more accessible ground.

I heard that some Danish scientists, monitoring sea temperatures off iceland, are predicting a very hard winter. Be careful what you wish for? Bring it on, I say.

For a wee while anyway.

Sore Calves

As I had guessed, going back to work after a fortnights holiday was a bit of a shock to the system. Especially as I was straight in to doing up my grouse butts.

The first line we went to was a brisk 45 minute walk with a nice wee pull up a brae to finish. And it just about finished me.

Well here we are 3 days on and today I started off doing a grouse count then continued by touring round some gritting stations. We have to withdraw the medicated grit from the grouse diet in advance of the shooting season so I have to get round all 200++ of my trays in the next few days.

Today I got round 80. And if you consider they are 200 yards apart, that's a lot of yards. (That's certainly what my legs are telling me.)

I thought you'd enjoy these pics. One is of a red deer calf that Ed latched onto. Normally you try and leave a calf like this alone- and not put any scent on it- but I had to ward off Ed and 3 spaniels.

The other pic was taken right up by my march with the neighbouring estate. It took me over an hour to walk up there but I'd rather that than a road like the one in the shot.
I had to do a double-take when I first saw this pic- I thought the dogs were practicing their circus trick.

Ears Something You Dont See Every Day

I woke at 3am to mist and rain. Just for a change. So another morning gone without us getting out to the foxes.

On the plus side, I had a day catching up with my traps instead. Unfortunately catching up was the only catching that was going on.

I'd checked my last trap and was walking home when I came across a sight that brightened up my day. I just had to share it with you.

A Whole Lot of Holes

Well, the rest of the heather burning season passed with nary a stick being burnt. If we'd been desperate we might have got a fire in on Friday afternoon but, by that stage, we were all geared up for other activities.

The grouse nesting season fast approaches. It's the time of year that hens are most vulnerable. To say nothing of eggs and chicks. So we've been putting our 'smoke break' to good use by getting all our stoat traps and crow cages set up. We also managed to get a few of our regular maintenance jobs out of the way which will free us up a bit more in the coming weeks.

Which is very good news for now our foxing season is upon us. And that means there just wont be enough hours in the day for the next few weeks.

We started today by walking a chunk of our lowest ground. It some areas, the ground is just riddled with rabbit holes- any of which could be scraped out and used by a fox.

So myself and 5 colleagues walked in a widely-spaced line with our shotguns and terrriers. We walked and we checked out sandholes and cairns as we went. We walked and we checked, we checked and we walked. We started walking at, say 0930 and we stopped at around 1600. That's a lot of holes.

By good fortune we didn't find anything. I say that because if we'd found a den, two of us would have been out all night on a stake-out for the dog fox. And the forecast is appalling.

But we've been there before and survived to tell the tale. Though not in language we could use in front of the children.

And The Weather Will Be Changeable....

Well, we're still not burning heather. The weather has gone from the sublime to the cor blimey. Suffice to say there wont be any runaway fires for a while.

The pics were taken just 4 days apart. If you look closely you'll see a tree bent double under the weight of snow. Coming into leaf obviously increases their surface area.

There's a niggling thought that keeps coming into our heads- in two weeks time we should be starting our foxing season. And with that comes our all-night vigils as we stake out the dens.

Maybe that should be 'fridgils'.

An Early Start for an Early Start

Any readers from this part of the world will be aware of the exceptional weather we've been having. Yesterday saw the highest temperature for a March day ever recorded and I haven't checked to see if that record was beaten today.

Going by the amount of perspiration it took for me to get to the top of the hill, I'd say there was a fair chance of it.

But what it means for us is that we've had to suspend our heather burning activities. Things were already getting 'kittely' last week so it's just not for chancing now.

So we've been getting round our traps and catching up some maintenance jobs. Tomorrow we're going to get on the hilltops for daybreak and see if we can get an early start to our fox season.

The alarm is set for 4.30am- so what the hell am I doing still sitting here writing this??

Taking the Plunge

It's a sair fecht!

The light covering of snow is making heavy weather of the stalking. There are no short-cuts when you stick out like a sore thumb. Furthermore, the long detours (to keep you out of sight of the deer) force you higher up the hills and into snow up to your f..f..f..fetlocks.

Generally speaking, the deer are still in great nick. This becomes very apparent if you make the slightest mistake.

Take yesterday, for example. I had a regular guest- John- out. The deer were low down on one side of the glen. So we took a long, slow plod over the hill above them. And as we did so, the deer casually crossed the glen.....

So John and I had a long belly crawl down a (mostly) frozen burn to cross the floor of the glen without them seeing us.(See pic!) As we did so I noisily broke through some ice. Brrr! 500 yards away one or two hinds got to their feet.....

By the time we were able to move freely again, most of the 400-strong herd were on the move. By the time we got to our shooting point there was 1 scrawny hind and her scrawnier calf left- and they had their bags packed and their passports stamped. John managed to nail the calf.

It was a massive amount of effort for 15kg of venison but it's typical of what this season has been like.

Today, for the first time in ages, I managed to come home with a decent bag. But it required a long walk, two long stalks and nearly all the daylight that was available.

I love my stalking but I have doubts as to what is going to come first- the end of the season or the end of my tether.

The Makeover

I've just had the office done up. New floor coverings and lighting. How do you like it?

Now to get that escalator ordered......

Storm Troopers

Since my last blog, the weather has turned a lot more...er...seasonal. We've had frost, we've had snow and we've had wind. Lots of it. On the top of Cairngorm (about 30 miles as the crow rapidly flies) they recorded a max. wind speed of 165mph.

Through all this, I've been stalking hinds. More often than not with a guest. This week we've been host to a group of army snipers. Each day I've had two of them out with me. It has meant full-on days, trying to get a shot for both. On the plus side they've certainly been more help than hinderance. They know how to spot, they know how to stalk and they know how to shoot.....and I took it upon myself to teach them how to drag!

And despite the inclement weather at the start of the week, they've managed to bag over 40 hinds over the 4 beats. Good going guys

It's one of my great pleasures introducing rookies to what I consider to be the most challenging- and rewarding- of fieldsports. And I make no excuses for the enthusiastic 'bloodings' I gave them. As with everything that was asked of them, they were well up for it.

But for now, my rifle is cleaned and locked away; my gear is drying out and my radios are charging. And I've got all weekend to summon the energy to do it all again come Monday.

So if you'll excuse me, it's time to throw another log on the fire.

In the space of a week I've gone from famine to feast. Everywhere I turn there are beasts. The hills resound with their roaring and I see fights on an almost hourly basis.

Some years the rut can be a bit of an anticlimax- if that isn't a bit of a contradiction. But this isn't some years. The last time I saw a rut like this was 4 or 5 years ago and that year I found 3 seperate stags that had been gored to death. Finding one is reasonably unusual.

But all these animals don't necessarily make things any easier for me. My problem now is being able to move for deer. And despite their numbers, I'm seeing relatively small numbers of 'shootable' stags. And those I do see always seem to have a pile of hinds, young stags and 'good' stags between them and me.

But with a bit of stealth and cunning- and a chunk of good ol' fashioned luck- I've been bringing home the...er...bacon. I've had 10 stags in the last 7 stalking days and a miss on a wicked switch (a stag with only 2 brow points and 2 top points) that I would have given my eye teeth for! C'est la vie.

On a totally different note, I've been contacted by a TV production company. They are investigating a 'jelly' that occurs in the countryside at this time of year. It appears that nobody really knows what it is. I was told a long time ago that is was stag semen but I have no way of verifying this.

Anyway I have my colleagues on red alert if they come across (sic) any of this stuff. A sample is needed. Just don't put it in the fridge next to the jams, lads.

Falling for The Fall

Today is the first of September, which means 2 things:- 1) It is the first day of Autumn and 2) There is a yoghurt in the fridge that constitutes a major biohazard.

With respect to 1), you would well believe it. Today was overcast, cool and windy. Very autumnal and very conducive to driving grouse but perhaps not to hitting them. The guests assured me that it was fun trying, tho'.

But Autumn is definitely here. The Rowan trees are laden with scarlet berries (a sign of a hard winter to come, according to folklore), the brackens are starting to turn yellow and the first leaves are turning on the birches. The swallows are flocking prior to their long migration to Africa and the stags antlers are- for the most part- clean of velvet.

The hills that were bright with the purple bloom of the heather are fading fast and it wont be long until the first frost.

It's a time of year that I love- especially later in the season when we are out stalking and the Red Deer rut is in full swing. At that time our resident population of about 3000 hinds and calves is joined by a further 1500+ stags and the noise and spectacle of the roaring and fighting and chasing is fantastic. Better, even, than the 'toon' on a Saturday night.

But there's plenty going to be happening before that, starting with dealing with 2).

If this is my last blog, you'll know I didn't make it........

A Red Letter Day

For some 'keepers getting allocated baby-sitting duty would definately be considered the short straw. I quite enjoy it. This morning I took 8 year old N out rabbit shooting. Earlier this week he called it his favourite thing in the whole world but today you wouldn't have guessed it.

It didn't help that it was a dreich morning, overcast with drizzle on a snell wind. I suspect his action-packed week was also catching up on him. Suffice to say that the shooting was extremely poor. Coupled with the rabbits playing cat-and-mouse (!) with us in the shelter of the sprots and brackens it made for a frustrating time.

When we returned to the lodge, the planned picnic was abandoned in favour of lunch in comfort and warmth. And who can blame them.

I returned mid-afternoon to be asked to take N and his 11 year old sister fishing. After last nights rain I reckoned the river would be perfect so I set up the rods for salmon. This was a bit of a gamble as I knew that their attention would wane if there wasn't the boost of catching the odd fingerling trout or salmon parr but I thought the conditions were too good to miss.

After an hour I was starting to regret the decision. They were starting to get bored and their fly casting was getting sloppier and sloppier. And this meant I was spending more and more time running up and down the river bank retrieving the flies from trees, thistles and rocks -but thankfully not ears, noses or siblings.

Fortuitously, I'd forseen this and had taken along a spinning rod as well. To keep interest up I also moved them on to the next 'lie' after only a few casts; "hit and run tactics" I call it but I quite like another expression a friend came up with recently. Shock and awe!

But even at this the kids were fast approaching 'critical mass'. At this point Providence threw me a lifeline and a salmon jumped right in front of us. That caught their attention!

As we'd already covered this fish with a rapala, I swapped it for a mepp spinner and with the very next cast the fish was on. I made sure N played this fish all by himself, only intervening by helping keep the rod up when the fish threatened to pull it out of his hands. A full quarter of an hour later and I tailed the fish out. A hen fish of about 7lbs and somewhat red, indicating it had certainly been in the river for a while. Normally I would recommend returning a fish like this but you only catch your first salmon once. Furthermore, I reckon if I'd thrown it back, N would have been right in after it.

All credit, 'I' was nothing but delighted at her brothers success and while he was preoccupied with cradling the fish and talking at a thousand words a minute, I had her cast over all the likely spots in the immediate vicinity.

As luck would have it, she hooked into a salmon within 10 minutes and another nail-biting quarter of an hour ensued. This time I didn't touch the rod and 'I' played the feisty fish out all by herself. Again, her first salmon and this time it was a cock fish, maybe a pound bigger than her brothers. Well done that lass!

I confess to having a twinge of concience at keeping this second fish but how could I deny her her share of the triumph. It would be fitting if these fish are used form the centrepiece of one of the lodges exceptional dinners and I,for one, would raise a glass to their captors.

When we returned to the lodge, the kids grabbed their fish and sprinted off into the house. I sincerely hope that they kept them off the furniture! As I packed the tackle away, Tom the butler came out and chatted. It turned out that their older brother had shot his first stag today.

It's a day that I hope will stay with them for the rest of their lives and on my way home I reflected on it and prayed that I'll be able to give my own wee boy the same experiences one day.