Having the last laugh

Over here on the wetter side of the Irish Sea, April has the potential to be something of a gloomy month for deerstalkers. The seasons for our three deer species don’t reopen until September, so the action still seems a long way off and, as April Fool’s Day arrives and the roebuck season opens across the water, it can feel as though the joke’s on us.

So I was delighted when a call came in late March from the owner of a private forestry plantation not far from me; 800 acres of mixed conifers spread across a mountainside high above the Kenmare Bay. Shooting rights to the adjacent forestry were let to a Dublin syndicate — who only show up for a few weekends each October if the weather is fine — so sika numbers were rising, animals were moving across the mountain and some young