A mountain to climb

Stalking sika in the Kerry wilds is a birthday treat for Barry Stoffell, but will he bag his stag before Mother Nature unleashes her wrath?

- Barry Stoffell

Fieldsports and tradition are inseparable. For some this is the observance of a particular mode of dress, an eagerly awaited seasonal meal or setting the alarm at 4 am on 1 September for the inaugural wildfowling outing of the year, irrespective of the weather or chances of success. For others it can take the form of an annual pilgrimage to a particular place, where a stretch of chalk stream or patch of moor is saturated with years of personal sporting memories.

Here in County Kerry, the last week of September heralds not only the onset of the sika rut but also plays host to another important cross on the calendar — my birthday. Given the happy coincidence of these events, it has long been a tradition to indulge my passion for deerstalking on my big day and for many years this has been my present to myself.

Heavy involvement in the management of deer in local forestry means I see more than sufficient Sitka spruce in the course of my workaday stalking. So when the occasion calls for something special, I invariably head inland to the high and wild places, and this year was no different.

Deer whisperer

Having other, festive matters to attend to in the morning, it was early evening before I met Donal ‘the Deer Whisperer’ Casey of JMM Hunting at the small stand of stone houses that mark the village of Glencar. High in the Kerry mountains, the village huddles in the shadow of Ireland’s tallest peak, Carrauntoohil. A famously remote part of a notoriously wild county, the adjacent valley was the very last place in Ireland to be electrified — in 1978.