When the story is not just the harvest

A cull buck pales in comparison to the beauty of the Breckland landscape, as Miles Malone savours a stalk in Norfolk's finest country

The buck and I met for the final time a little after 8am, and the shot was fired among the thick, yellow gorse as we faced each other on a late spring morning. But this is not the story. The story started some hours before, as I sat in the deer hut, the door open to the departing night, listening to the owls in the distance calling hauntingly over the open Breck to a dark horizon.

This early morning followed a fitful night of sleep on a bunk; the corrugated sheets above amplified the nocturnal noises, and I had woken intermittently feeling it was time to rise, only to find the clock's hands had remained stubbornly positioned in the early hours. I drifted back into fitful slumber to the sound of the gentle breeze swaying the pines overhead. Finally, the alarm sounded, and I was soon sat drinking strong coffee with my labrador pressed expectantly against my leg.

The coffee began to work its medicine and the cool morning air, blowing in through the open door, cleared the final vestiges of sleep, and then began a growing expectation of what was to come. I started to think of the Breckland surrounding me, of the bucks there, and of the morning. Soon the weight of the rifle was on my shoulder, and I was walking out into the welcome breeze.

First, through the thick woodland, I walked quietly among the coniferous trees, smelling the pines in the morning air, knowing the birds would soon be singing in expectation of the coming dawn. Light came slowly to the dense pine woods. It was a relief to move out into broken woodland, to see the distant hint of light, to know dawn was finally coming among the birch trees, then into gorse and everywhere sand. A Breck dawn.