Oh, to be a big red stag

Stalking in Ireland is facing a ‘perfect storm’ of COVID-19 lockdowns, plummeting prices and hunting licence delays, says Barry Stoffell

- Barry Stoffell

As we entered Keats’ “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”, here on the Atlantic Irish coast we experienced a bit of each.

An unusually calm and mild September in Kerry gave way to a wet and foggy October and, while the pace of life for us Homo sapiens continued to be dominated by the coronavirus, it was profoundly reassuring to see that within the deer population it was very much business as usual.

Shrinking daylight hours were silently registered by cervine pituitary glands across the country, kickstarting the annual hormone surge that would culminate in the rut.

Mature sika stags started drifting in from the margins and showing up in the usual stands throughout September. By the end of the month, the hills and forests of the county once again woke to the sound of whistling. In Killarney National Park, the red deer were taking their positions and preparing to follow suit a few weeks later.

That, however, was where normality ended and, in direct contrast to the predictable annual shifts in the deer population, those of us tasked with their management were about to see our movements increasingly curtailed.

A tough year

Many of us, wary perhaps of the disruption clouding the horizon, made good inroads into the stag cull in late September in some unseasonably warm conditions. This had a sadly workmanlike feel to it, largely due to the absence of the colourful cast of overseas characters who would normally have travelled to Ireland to participate.