There is a natural pause to my stalking year, which gradually comes into being in late May, as the cover pushes up and finding deer becomes more challenging. The long campaign to complete the cull has kept me on the deer path since the preceding August; through the late summer evenings to the woods in all their autumnal glory, to dark winter-morning rises before crisp, high-pressure dawns and then to the spring of pioneer snowdrops brightening bleak woodland floors, then bluebells and birdsong and a thousand shades of emerging green.
Suddenly and naturally it then feels right to place the rifle in the cabinet, knowing, with the cull made, it is the last outing for some time, and the deer are left in peace, hidden in the expanse of cover.
Spectacle of the mayfly
Nature has a way of filling these gaps. The changing conditions that have
