The Deer Hunter’s Apprentice

The Deer Hunter's Apprentice

Deer hoof ‘slot’ imprinted into soft mud. Two toes separated by a ridge of mud

In my last post I explained how a number of us had started 'Deer School', learning some of the tracking skills employed by deer experts to determine the presence of the UK's least understood biological pest.

Today I am attempting to put these rather un-honed skills to the test and see how I match up to the venerable Gazza. But first I have to do a bit of work managing yet another biological pest – the wild rabbit. So I pop off to Bat Park for an hour to add an additional 10 metres of rabbit fencing. Only 80 metres to go now. OK, rabbit fencing done for today, so I am free to don the deer hunters hat and camoflage cloak of invisibility and put myself to the test.

As I make my way down Hemlock Valley I spot the most obvious sign – a hoof print, or deer slot. There it sits alone, like a footprint in Robinson Crusoe's beach sand. I too look around slightly unerved by a single hoof print in the mud. Am I being watched? Then I snap out of it. After all Robinson Crusoe was just fiction – wasn't it?

A little further down the path and I spot a nipped off twig, with a tell-tale sliver of bark snaking out from the cut end (sorry, you'll have to do your homework and check out my last post to understand the significance of this).

Nipped-off twig leaves a distinctive sliver of bark on one side - definitely deer browsing

That's two bits of detection work in the bag. Then I stumble across the most compelling discovery so far, a whole trail of deer slots in the mud where several deer have crossed the Wilderness Stream, like four-legged friends leaping Beecher's Brook in the Grand National.

A mass of deer hoof prints where a number of deer have crossed the Wilderness Stream

I decide to follow but quickly lose the trail. How did that happen? I'm sure if Tom Hanks had found lots of footprints in the sand he wouldn't have failed so miserably! Undaunted I continue downstream and cut across the A-Z trail at Steep Hill. It's been raining recently, quite a lot if truth be told, and I step on a wet branch hidden under bracken. Wet wood is notorious for slips and trips and I find myself looking skyward. Doubtless any deer in the wood will have scuttled off in the direction of Uckfield by now.

I pick myself up and carefully pick my way into the adjacent, recently felled area of conifers. Here I discover not deer, but evidence of Jake and his conservation volunteers deer research and management activities. It is a 3 metre by 3 metre area of land, devoid of trees, encircled by an 8 foot high mesh fence – an exclosure designed to keep deer out (as opposed to an enclosure, to keep them in). Inside the fence is a single 3 foot tall hazel sapling. It looks a little ridiculous, as though someone has placed the eqivalent of a lump of cheese on a mouse trap in an effort to catch one of our tree predators. The exclosure is of course not an attempt to catch deer but to keep them out. The assumption is that new trees will grow within (and outside of) the exclosure. If deer are present in the wood we will spot all sorts of signs of grazing outside of the fence and none inside. Young saplings will grow unhindered within, whilst similar ones will be largely absent without. Cunning plan eh?

Deer exclosure to keep deer out. Saplings will grow ungrazed inside, but will be grazed outside if deer are present.

Then a see a movement amongst the trees perhaps 50 metres in front of me. I lunge for my phone and quickly turn the camera on. Bingo, the apprentice has hit the jackpot – two small even-toed ungulates casually browsing on small twigs. But they quickly realise that I am near and get a little animated. Then quick as a flash they bounce over piles of brushwood and pronk through the trees and out of sight. Not bad. Even the great Gazza wasn't able to give us a deer sighting on our training day. The problem for me is what species of deer. Less than a metre tall, dark noses and doe eyed, a flash of white rump fur and bounding gait through the wood suggest roe deer. I suppose they could be young fallows. You decide.

Then deep in the wet woodland downstream of the new ponds I round the day off with a nice collection of shiny brown deer poo. What a perfect end to a morning's deer hunting. Nothing to this deer stalking mularky is there? Piece of cake!

David Horne

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