Forest clearance

Tom Cackett heads to Sherwood and the Thoresby Estate to seek out some wild lowland reds

- Tom Cackett

The weather forecast for the Friday in question had looked horrible all week – not just rain, but 100% chance of heavy rain. All day Combine this with a 4am alarm and the excursion wasn’t shaping up to be everything I’d hoped for.

My outing was to hunt something I’d never encountered before – wild lowland red stags. I’ve shot countless park red deer here near my base in Oxfordshire and a number of hinds in Scotland, but never wild lowland reds, which I’d been led to believe were a totally different kettle of fish.

History 

The host for my outing was John, deer manager on the Thoresby Estate. Thoresby is located in the Sherwood Forest in north Nottinghamshire and is nestled in between three other country estates. The area is steeped in history and at one point all four neighbouring estates were occupied by dukes. More importantly to me, Thoresby is also home to red, fallow, roe and muntjac.

I met John at 5.15am outside the estate office and, surprise, he greeted me with a joke about the weather. I climbed into the estate pickup and we headed off. Thoresby covers more than 10,000 acres, of which about a quarter is woodland. The remainder is farmed within an arable rotation of potatoes, carrots, sugar beet, barley, oilseed rape and wheat, or grazed by livestock.