Deer become obvious in the cold weather. Their chocolate-brown winter coats seem almost black against snow or heavy frost and it can be easy to spot their familiar shapes at the range of a mile or more. In rime frost or brilliant days of high atmospheric pressure in December or January, the roe deer is one of the easiest animals to see in the countryside. They stand out like sore thumbs and that’s before you remember that hard conditions will often drive roe into large gangs of seven or eight.
If seeing a single deer is easy, bigger gangs will always draw the searching eye. Larger numbers of roe in a field together earn themselves a kind of camouflage because they can be mistaken at a glance for goats or rare-breed sheep.
