A Year in the Woods: The Diary of a Forest Ranger Read online

  The owls sound as though they’re having a competition going on to see which one can make the loudest and longest hoot. Away in the distance I hear different calls, the screeching chatter of the blackbird. In the dark, opposite the high seat, another sound resonates; a sound like a lion crossed with a pig, a mixture of a roar and a grunt, as if the creature is continually trying to clear its throat. Only now is the dawn light starting to arrive. Will it ever get bright? It appears second by second like a sleepwalker slowly moving towards the light.

  A sparrowhawk whooshes over my head, almost touching my hair. It jigs between the branches, oblivious of my presence, then sweeps down, making a sharp turn to the right, accelerating and disappearing up a very narrow and overgrown ride. I glance to my side and can just about make out the grapefruit yellow of the dying hazel leaves next to my elevated position. Only now is it possible to make out the shapes of the closest of the bushes and the underwood, dark greens against a darker surround.

  The pine tops around the seat sway in the wind, their silhouette like a mountain range against the overcast milky-grey sky. I sit motionless, entranced by the colour and movement of the sky, my ears listening out for the sounds and calls around me. I mentally file the sounds away in my head, ticking off the noises I know and guessing at the others. There’s the first call of the wren, so loud and strong yet melodic, while the blackbird still pipes away at a distance. All around me more birdsong, different voices with separate vocals and all at different levels. Sounds enclose me, and I hear the constant drumming of the water droplets sliding off a drenched leaf above, showering single-storey bushes below me. The stone-tapping alarm calls of the blackbird have stopped. It’s also getting slightly easier to make out the shapes around me, though colour has yet to appear at distance. I stare at a close sodden leaf with a silvery sheen, dancing alone in the wind: the last to fall, its family gone, it waits its turn in nature.

  The strange grunting is close now and I can make out movement: the shape of a lone fallow buck. I glass the shape: he’s dark and trots oddly, carrying an injury possibly collected in the rut. Limping, he crosses the ride to my right, but he’s too far away and too quick, and as I move my rifle scope over his mass there’s far too much branch debris between him and me. It’s definitely the right deer to take. Although injured it is moving fast, maybe too fast to stop. I call to it: ‘Hey!’ It halts momentarily, behind a tree, then moves on even faster. I cuss myself under my breath for not cutting the lower branches close to the seat, which now, water laden and heavy, bend and obscure my view. I cuss for not putting the maintenance in; it’s certainly costing me now as it is possible I will never see that buck again.

  Movement in front catches my eye, and my sight leaves the buck, for below the brow of a slope a dark fallow doe manoeuvres towards me, tense but fully alert, tuned in to her environment. Behind her, travelling in her footfall, are three more of the herd, all of various colours. Fingers of sunlight seek low over the forest floor as the deer slow at the timber edge before crossing the ride. The cross-hairs of my rifle scope find the last and smallest of the herd – a doe. At the pause, I check she’s broadside and that I have a clear backstop for the bullet. The rifle cracks, and waiting for the strike I watch her fall. The rest run off in a line to the safety of the thicket. Quiet returns and I remain still, allowing the forest to become alive again. As I sit in my perch, the light finally arrives, flooding everything around me. It’s going to be a lovely day. I sit and wait, listening to the calls of an annoyed jay.

  I’m back again in the same seat, but this time I arrive a little later. The frozen truck tracks are uncomfortable to walk on and the leaves on the path lie curled and crisp, announcing my every step. I move more slowly than usual, trying to avoid hidden puddles of ice caught in the ridges of the vehicle tracks; if I miss my footing then the ice cracks loudly, making me wince and cuss. At least it’s slightly lighter this morning, and the frost helps, with its sparkling illuminations on the path to my high seat.

  I have almost reached the seat when a grey form passes me, looking as though it is floating across the frozen ground. No sound comes from the fox. It stops abruptly, as if it has walked into a brick wall, which in a sense it has as it picks up my scent that lingers on the ride edge. Turning sharply without giving a glance in my direction it leaves the area, manoeuvring itself over frozen obstacles silently. The seat looks like an ice sculpture this morning. At every rung my woollen mittens stick to the ice crystals that encrust the metal frame.

  The light comes more quickly today; I have been in the seat for about twenty minutes when a movement to my left catches my eye. Two chestnut tan-coloured fallow does pronk, one behind the other, out of the shelter of the hawthorn scrub into view under some well-spaced beech. Throwing my binoculars to my eyes I select one. It is an easy assessment for the first is scrawny and thin-necked, her long nose a sure sign of age. The cross-hairs of the scope soon find her. Taking a chance, for I know they are committed to go somewhere only they know, I call out to them. The shout (‘Hey, you!’) does the trick, for both deer pause before crossing the ride, enabling me to drop the selected female. As usual with true wild fallow there is no time for mourning. At the shot the younger doe speeds away without stopping, back to where the pair first appeared from within the hawthorn thicket.

  Manage to get soaked this morning, and tonight finds me back once more in the same seat. The one with no roof. And here comes the rain again.

  When you control deer you spend many hours alone, watching and waiting, but mainly waiting, usually in a high seat. These come in various forms, providing different levels of comfort. The luxurious Thetford high seat, for example, is a wood-clad tower with a roof supported on four twelve- to fifteen-foot-long poles, which keeps you, and more importantly your rifle and binoculars, dry. Being square, the cabin offers four supportive shooting points, allowing stability for a long shot and all-round visibility.

  Having no such five-star seats on my beat I tend to use the less elaborate type, the lean-to, which is a seat on a ladder that can be leant into and wired on to almost any suitable tree. Placing one near a young plantation gives me a few years of use as the trees slowly mature, saving the need for constant moving.

  Portable seats are my favouite choice; lightweight, they can be easily transported to any part of the forest. There are several designs: some come fully erected and can be carried on a roof rack; there is also a fold-up model, compact enough to fit in the boot of any mid-sized car.

  More important than any of these designs, however, is getting the siting of the structure right in the first place, preferably at the end of a debris-free track, enabling you to stalk quietly through the woods to reach it.

  With a damp fog getting thicker it is too dangerous to carry on stalking so I decide to call it a night and have another bash in the morning. Climbing back up the hill with the truck I am surprised when I drive out the other side of the cloud of fog, as if in a plane rising above the cloud line. I enter the plateau to a bright and miraculously sunny scene.

  It is still snowing as I leave the house this morning. Not everyone likes snow, and I imagine in some areas of the country it must be a real nuisance. But, myself, I like the snow and I even find certain snows, freshly laid, absorbent and unfrozen, helpful in aiding me to get my cull.

  When I drive out of my village the headlights reveal a different world to the one I went to bed in the previous night. But the truck is in its element and cuts through the morning’s virgin snow like a wire through cheese. When the sun finally comes out I am welcomed by sights few others would see, still tucked away in the warmth of their blankets. The first crimson rays of the sun touching the powdered snow that coats the packed branches of the fir trees in the forest remind me of the beauty of an apple. The pleasure I get from such mornings makes me feel very lucky that I am in a position to see such incredible things. Surely your very soul needs to absorb such visions, which allow you to appreciate the nature around you. When occasiona
lly I get low with the politics of life, I think what a privileged position I have with my office being the forest itself. At times like these I might think back to those sunny days when, on my travels from one forest block to another, I pass several small industrial units. Sat outside the units for maybe only a quarter of an hour, a small group of pasty-coloured factory workers will have congregated, attempting in their lunch break to catch a few rays of sunlight. They sit like grubs on a carcass with their faces turned skywards, feeling the glory of it and perhaps wondering where it all went wrong.

  Today the ground is as hard as iron: a new world. I love this weather; it lets you know you’re having a winter. I’m glad we sometimes get conditions like this; I think I’d miss the experience of getting into the truck when the seat feels like a solid lump, the moisture in the material of the seat having frozen hard. I leave early this morning even though the truck is putting up a protest, first refusing to start and then punishing me by not allowing any heat into the icy coffin of a cab.

  Surprisingly this evening I account for three roe does despite the cold, catching them feeding on ivy on a windblown larch. The expired body-heat steam in the back of the truck does little to bring warmth into the icy cab. I have yet to feel my feet. That aside, my spirits are high. Outside, the stars are visible above me in the Milky Way, and patches of snow remain on the ground, waiting for fresh fall to join them up again. A massive, brilliant full moon lights up my path back to the last roe doe I culled. I savour the experience and the mood, for rather than feeling desolate the forest is welcoming. I banished all fear of the night long ago, instead embracing it, thankful that I can revere and appreciate all it has to offer.

  While working today with a group of volunteers scrub-cutting, we uncover the winter ground nest of a torpid dormouse. The strange thing is the nest is right next to an active badger run. Old brock’s eyesight is not particularly good but he has got an amazing sense of smell, so I am surprised the hazel mouse had not been snobbled up for a snack. I guess a sleeping dormouse doesn’t give off very much, if any, scent. We decide to let nature take its course, re-covering the nest with woodland materials and leaving in situ. (On an inspection in the spring I notice that the dormouse has made it through the winter, and the nest is completely undisturbed. Phew.)

  This afternoon a small falcon flies over the bonnet of the truck, carrying a songbird in its talons, but it is not a bird of prey I am familiar with. In the forest we have resident buzzards, sparrowhawk and peregrine and, on the heathland areas, the hobby. Later I identify the stranger as a merlin, the smallest of all the falcons in the British Isles. It was certainly swift and powerful for its size, and cute.

  Today I have a comical sighting of five male squirrels pursuing the scent of a single female. Wherever the female leads the males follow, in single file, chasing her, bewitched, up and down the trunk and across the moss-covered branches of an ancient oak. The female finally comes to the ground and the male suitors follow obediently in a line, making snuffling noises as though hoovering the ground, treading in her every footfall as a pack of bloodhounds would on the trail of a fox. I watch as she leads the lovesick males in a trance of lust back up the tree for another route march around the canopy. I wonder if they’ll ever catch up with her.

  It has been threatening to snow all morning and by early afternoon the flakes are rapidly covering the ground. When I leave to stalk for the rest of the afternoon only four-wheel-drives are still able to get up the hill – already a few two-wheel-drives have been abandoned. Because of cars blocking the road, and snowdrifts caused by the wind blowing through the open farm gateways, my route is hampered and it takes longer than usual to reach the wood. Opening the barrier I know I am entering an arctic world.

  The freshly pitched snow, glinting like crystal glass, stretches pristine before me. There are no human footmarks, no vehicle tracks. I have the wood to myself. The snowfall slows to small silvery gems and as I pause for a moment I am coated in winter’s handiwork. Overhead a few struggling leaves cling desperately to branches, rattling dry and crisp, the cold wind battering and tearing at them. The bitter gusts make me shiver enough to have to do my top button up as they push and harass miniature snow twisters, brushing them along and off into the larger drifts. The sight is one of a white desert, but although it looks bleak, I feel warm inside. To encounter alone such weather in the failing pale afternoon light is sheer magic.

  I follow a meandering ride, which takes me deep into this white kingdom. All around are animal and bird tracks. Stories are here to be read of life and death on the snow blanket: by this discarded cone a squirrel fed, and here a mouse cleared snow from the mouth of its hole. Further up the ride, feathers – fluffy and grey, once worn by a chaffinch and now half frozen in the stiff wind – twist and sway. Dotted about the scene, particles of red tell of an aerial hunt that ended on this lonely patch of snow. Taken in the air the songbird was cast to the ground, the weight of its pursuer leaving its body dent in the snow. The wing-tips marked the ground when it rose to the sky with its partially plucked prize.

  I glass within the large expanses of bramble, looking for an unobservant roe doe, and am happily surprised how quiet and fast I can move in this type of snow. It absorbs the weight of my wellies and, being unfrozen, it feels and sounds like polystyrene, slightly squeaky if you walk too fast but ideal if you are prepared to take it slowly. In the sea of white I can easily pick out my quarry, but with the boot on the other foot my prey can just as easily spy on my movements. Stealth and hunting experience are the only things that can give you the edge. I know the deer will be extra hungry and, as the weather is set to last, with the temperature dropping, they will become uncomfortable, the cold making them rise earlier than usual.

  Inside the bramble, under the canopy of the trees, the snow and wind have failed to cover everything with a blanket of white. After finding myself a bare patch, I spot a doe and her young busily blowing the dusty-textured snow off green shoots of bramble with short nasal blasts of air. The sound they make is not one I am familiar with – it’s a low frequency, unlike the higher-pitched noise a roe often emits. Out of the darker shades and shadows of the crop trees further roe join the pair.

  Down the ride, in the distance, I catch sight of two more shapes, in a field of perfect white, crossing the ride. Even though these deer are further away, the silhouettes they cast make them easy to sex, the anal tush sharp and clear on the canvas of snow. It is with a feeling of reluctance that I stop short a life in such a wonderful setting. But I play my part as predator and am punished by the trek back to the vehicle, having to carry the pair back in the same roe sack.

  Picking my way home through the snow-covered countryside, I have time to reflect on the night’s events and why it still leaves me with small pockets of regret.

  Like a worn-out page that I have read over and over again, I understand the reasoning behind deer control. Kept at the right numbers, deer have a role to play in the ecology of the forest; they also provide immense enjoyment for the human soul when we see them in the wild. With our large predators gone, man sets his own agenda and dictates what he perceives to be the right number of deer allowed to survive. I’m certainly glad I’m past my youthful keenness for numbers and the bang-bang-buggery stage of my life that every hunter goes through, trying to impress the older guys, who quite rightly merely shrug in response, unimpressed. They are well aware that one day you too will lose that strong desire to kill, as sure in that knowledge as in the knowledge that a young caterpillar will grow to become a butterfly. If you can go stalking and feel no pain yourself when you take a life or wound an animal, then you are not fit for the purpose. It is healthy and indeed wise at times to examine the role you fill, while having a justified reason to end a life that you can explain to no one but yourself. The experiences I share with the deer in weather and places like these leave me with feelings of great respect and also a form of regret, and yet all these feelings combine to enforce a love for the whole system
. I talk, sleep and eat deer – we are joined, a pair!

  It’s certainly not a perfect world, for why have we ticks? I have been flat out on the roe doe cull, so every night before having a bath I have got into the routine of a tick check. While washing my mop I notice and feel a pair of unwelcome visitors climbing around in my hair. Deer lice can be a real pain to grab, you chase them around until you can corner them in your sideburns. Lice are all over the deer when they’re alive but when the carcass goes cold, as in the larder, they readily head for anything remotely warm. That must have been where I picked up mine, while moving carcasses around in the larder. Ticks have to be unplugged on a daily basis, yet the crablike lice are difficult to locate. One of the joys of deer work.

  February

  ‘Batten down the hatches’ is the stern advice given by the local television weathergirl. ‘There’s a low coming from the west; bringing heavy rain preceded by gale-force winds.’

  When I load the dogs into the truck the sky is clear, with countless twinkling stars above. A gust of wind chillier than the previous day’s sweeps past me, a precursor of things to come. It comes seemingly from nowhere, catching the kennel door and slamming it hard and noisily against the frame before I can grab it. The cold blast wakes me up somewhat and is followed by another, one sharp gust following the other like waves on the sea. In contrast, overhead the stars look so calm, untouched by any of nature’s wild buffeting force. They seem to stare down, unmoved, on our distant glowing planet, like the souls of once knowledgeable and superior gods.