Bound to get back on the bucks

Miles Malone finds a gap in his usual stalking season, but nature's bounty provides the perfect opportunity to try for a roebuck in the high cover

- Miles Malone

There is a natural pause to my stalking year, which gradually comes into being in late May, as the cover pushes up and finding deer becomes more challenging. The long campaign to complete the cull has kept me on the deer path since the preceding August; through the late summer evenings to the woods in all their autumnal glory, to dark winter morning rises before crisp, high-pressure dawns and then to the spring of pioneer snowdrops brightening bleak woodland floors, then bluebells and birdsong and a thousand shades of emerging green.

Suddenly and naturally it then feels right to place the rifle in the cabinet, knowing, with the cull made, it is the last outing for some time, and the deer are left in peace, hidden in the expanse of cover.

Spectacle of the mayfly

Nature has a way of filling these gaps. The changing conditions that have caused the blooming cover and hidden the deer have also warmed the flowing chalk stream waters, resulting in dormant life re-energising. First come hawthorns and then, among others, comes the great spectacle of the mayfly. The trout respond, ending their winter torpor, active again in the warming waters, feeding voraciously on these delicate short-lived insects.

Perhaps the changing season also acts upon me, for as soon as the last May roebuck has been grassed, I begin to think of these clear-flowing waters again, of the balanced weight of the rod in my hand and of the rolling arc of line straightening ahead of me to deposit a Grey Wulff to a crease of water where, moments before, a trout had hungrily risen to feed on a mayfly.