The White Pheasant

Every year we notice at least one pure white pheasant living wild. This year it survived the entire shoot season, only to die from natural causes during our recent bout of cold weather. We found it stone dead in a hedge, no marks or injuries on it. Pip is "helping" me inspect the carcase:

CSI: Labrador

Every year we hatch a small percentage of white pheasants and very dark pheasants. The white is a form of albinism. The birds don't necessarily have red eyes; it depends on the genetic origin of the albinism . Unfortunately, the mutation seems to decrease its life expectancy. The dark pheasants' plumage is caused by melanism.

White animals are still seen as an anomaly. On an estate like this one with a healthy population of Fallow deer, we are often stopped and told by someone that he or she has see "The White Deer". White fallow are surprisingly common. It's a coat colour and not a form of albinism. I have seen 5 or so white animals in a single herd of wild Fallow, but I never have the heart to tell the visitor that his sighting was anything less than amazing. Or that we prefer not to shoot the white deer because we use those to help us spot the herds of darker fallow that blend better with their woodland surroundings.

Zen and the Art of Park Deer

Ian, our work experience lad, has been practicing the art of gralloching deer as part of his college course, just down the road from us at a large deer park.  I need practice too so, being a pushy foreigner, I called the deer manager and asked if I could come along with the college course for a day. He said show up and ask the tutor. So this morning I was stood in the yard of the deer park at 8 a.m. in my rubber overalls, waiting to beg the tutor to let me stay and learn. He kindly agreed.

This deer park has herds of fallow, sika, and red deer, and a few rare Père David's deer, so I got the opportunity to handle different animals, a change from my regular (smaller) roe deer. Park deer are akin to livestock: well-fed and well-managed to create big animals. Compared to the wild deer I've shot, the deer that rely on foraging and fighting to survive, there was monstrous amount of subcutaneous fat and cavity fat on the park deer. And some impressive antlers.

Deer in parks are treated as a walking larder, and appropriate animals are culled to order. Today Richard the deer manager shot twenty deer in total for us to prepare. Richard shot them in groups of up to seven animals, and we took it in turns to pick them up from where they fell. Working in pairs, we wrestled them into a box on the back of a tractor and the driver took us all back to the larder.

Once at the larder, we unloaded each deer and took the legs off below the knees, then cut a slit in the back legs to fit a gambrel - a metal rod that spreads the legs and creates a central point for hanging the deer so its head is pointing downwards. The deer has to have its innards removed quickly, within about half an hour, or the gas build-up in the stomach starts to expand and would eventually rupture, contaminating the carcase and rendering it inedible. Compare the deer in the foreground to the two behind -

Serious trapped wind.

I gralloched a fallow (above), a sika, and a large red - all females - over the course of the morning, alongside other students and their deer. It was a grisly, greasy mess, and I had to breathe through my mouth to stomach so many gut smells in a confined room -

In the field when you shoot a single animal, there's a puddle of congealed blood and a small package of guts, and lots of fresh air. When finished, you clean your hands and knife on wet grass. This was a venison abattoir, with antiseptic wash and separate buckets for kidneys and hearts. The deer carcases kept coming in from the field, and were lining up on the rail as fast as we could attend to them.

The worst part was cleaning the tripe - the deer stomach. Richard feeds them to his dogs. Once removed from the deer we had to cut the stomachs open and empty out their partially digested, grassy contents. The smell was unholy, like bad compost and bile. I turned them inside out, and pressure-washed them off. I did quite a few for the students who couldn't, well, stomach the job.

I also took my turn emptying the 'gralloch' (it's both a verb and a noun - the process of removing the guts, and the guts proper) into the dead pit on the far edge of the estate. It gave me a chance to tour the deer park from the back of the tractor, and take a few photos of the deer that escaped the cull -

That's a small herd of sika deer. I'm afraid that's the best picture I could manage while hanging on in a box on the back of a tractor bouncing over fields, trying not to fall out backwards, or worse - fall forwards into 90 gallons of deer guts.

We finished all the deer by 1pm and, after pressure-washing myself, I stopped for a cup of thermos coffee and a peanut butter sandwich. Masticating always makes me thoughtful (maybe cows are philosophers too?) and I remembered a passage in Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance about analysis being like a knife that cuts all experience, and kills in the process. Once something is known, he says, its value as art or its beauty is diminished.

But Pirsig claims that something new, with potential to be art, is created in the process. Gralloching the deer, my knife was both literal and metaphorical, dissecting a natural, beautiful creature that I saw from the back of that tractor into its no-longer-functioning organs and muscles. I didn't feel like I'd created anything beautiful out of the gore and death until I looked in the chiller and saw the potential -

And then the art -

This rebirth took the form of dry cured bacon, parma hams, and salamis. Believe me it is an artform, not wrought only by a skilled butcher but by the helpful bacterias and environmental conditions that have to be in harmony to create the charcuterie.

I left feeling more peaceful about what I'd unmade - then helped to make - today.

I came home to a hot meal, which thankfully didn't include venison or innards of any kind, and Mike offered to help me with the final post-deer gralloching job: checking me over for ticks. We get Lyme's Disease in England too.

The romance of being married to a gamekeeper never stops.

Tomorrow it's back to the pheasants - we're aiming (no pun intended) to shoot 125 birds with our guests. The working dogs will get a special breakfast, what I earned today: a tripe and a kidney each. They love it, but I'll stick to the salami, thanks all the same.

Pottering

Mike and I managed to take half a day off yesterday. A whole six hours. We squandered it watching the last in the Harry Potter series of films. In the middle of the day. I even had a glass of wine at lunch, which felt very badass. OK, it was Pizza Hut's house wine, but it was the best (and absolute worst) glass of wine I've had in forever. The food just tasted manufactured and unsophisticated, but a waitress brought it to me and no one interrupted our lunch. At home, the phone and the door would be going at the same time. We both left our mobile phones at home. There was a lot of giggling.

Before we set off for the big town and multiplex cinema, I made an effort to tidy myself up. I slapped on some cover-the-grey dye, and while that was working its magic (Griseum Obscura!) I had time to mix up cement and patch the holes in the kennels where Quincy has excavated loose concrete. Mike built more release pens for his pheasants, but found clean jeans - no holes, no blood - for trip to town. Our rare trips to town are the only time that there isn't a dog in the truck with us, either curled up on the floor, spaniel-style or sprawled out on the seats, lab-style.

We're not so rural that mixing with crowds should be unnerving, but it is. There is so much noise from people and traffic that I feel disoriented. There are TV screens everywhere, and music and sound. In the movie theatre, the sound was turned up so loud, even with my impaired hearing it hurt my ears. I think it was to drown out the sounds of other patrons eating popcorn and rustling wrappers.

At home I can hear a flock of house sparrows noisily invade a shrub near the bird feeder. I can hear a green woodpecker call. I can hear wind rustling leaves, which is altogether more comforting that candy wrappers. I can hear the dog snoring. When the cockerels start crowing I know it's after 5pm. There's so much going on, so why is it less of an assault on my nerves than sound and light in town?

I got home with enough light to spare that I went deer stalking. Maurading deer are still eating the cider orchard. A couple of hours sitting quietly yielded a yearling for the larder -

Mike talked me through a better gralloching technique too -

It's going to be a short cold summer and I'm taking stock of my vegetable harvest. The carrots are going to be plentiful -

And the apple crop too -

However, my tomatoes and sweetcorn could really use an Engorgio spell.

Oh, deer...

It's a busy time of year for us. I probably say that a lot, but it's true this time, honest. The weather is warming up and the mud is drying up. Milkweed has been harrowed to flatten out hoof prints. Early vegetables seeds are sprouting in the greenhouse, and the magnolia is in bloom -

 

The chickens love eating the fallen blossoms when I first let them out in the morning. It seems an odd choice for breakfast. I would like to think that the chickens know what they need to eat to lay the best eggs, but I've seen them eating Styrofoam so the jury's out on chicken logic.

I've finished netting over my expanded vegetable patch -

I'm nearly finished manuring and digging the two new beds now. A continuous fortnight of good weather has helped. I had to stop digging after I went to a Zumba class. The class looked like fun and I figured I could use the cardio to balance out my muscle bulk from activities like flipping sheep and digging. My sciatic nerve didn't agree and now I can't sit down without causing a shooting pain up my leg. I'm writing this post standing up at the kitchen counter, and my onions are definitely going to get planted late this year.

The upside of not sitting down is that lots of little jobs are getting done, where I would normally flop down in front of the television and squander that time watching re-runs of 'Columbo'. The dogs get extra long walks, and I even found time to slap a coat of fresh paint on the cupboards in the kitchen, which is also my temporary study until I get better.

The quail have started laying and I have to hunt for their well-camouflaged eggs hidden in the deep straw bedding -

quail egg compared to chicken egg

Susan is broody. I replaced her clutch with five Buff Orpington eggs -

I don't mind hatching a few more dual purpose chickens. A few days ago my neighbor Simon asked me to dispatch Trevor, his Buff Orpington cockerel.  He brought round a bit of the cooked bird for us to try last night. There wasn't a huge amount of breast meat but the legs were large and the bird was very tasty. A bit gamey even. Simon says that was probably a reflection of Trevor's personality. I won't mind so much now if a few boys hatch out in Susan's brood.

The pheasants have started laying in their pens, and we began collecting the eggs this week. There are 32 pens, each pen holds 65 hens and 8 cocks. I'll save you the math: 2,080 laying hen, 256 breeding cocks. The pens stretch the length of the field -

My sheep are currently grazing the grass on the laying field, and they follow me from pen to pen, watching me put eggs in a basket.

I think that the egg basket resembles a feed bucket, if you're a sheep.

Quincy is growing like a spring weed. Lily the chocolate lab has been an energetic and tolerant playmate for Quincy. The more they play together, the more Quincy learns and, more importantly, the less she chews my shoes.

Lily has started spending weekdays at her new home, with her new owner. We all look forward to seeing her back on the weekends. No one more than Spud, who gets stuck with puppy duties when Lily's not here. Spud spends most of her weekends recuperating -

On top of vegetable plots, egg picking, and dog wrestling matches, there are still deer to harvest. Thursday was the end of doe season, and Friday was the start of roe buck season. I still had one more doe to account for, and I went out every night this past week to try and bag her.

A deer ride through the woods - a good starting place

 

I don't think I've ever had such a dry spell. The first night I saw the back end of one disappear into the covert. The second night out, I saw nothing. Third night, I decided to take the dogs for a walk and didn't carry a gun. Of course, I saw two decent cull animals in range. The fourth night, I found this -

A fresh pile of deer scat, still warm (yes I touched it...) I walked on and hoped to run into the beast, but saw nothing. In desperation, I sat above a deer trail with good views and a good back stop (for the rifle bullet, should I miss). I sat until it got dark and the pain from sitting got the better of me -

You can just make out the path - look through the top centre square

Nothing. No does before the end of the season. I will have to tack that one onto next season's cull plan. I hope I have better luck with roe bucks this week.

I did find something else, something disturbing and unwelcome -

It's a home made ball bearing. I found it under a tree where pheasants roost. Poachers shine a light into treetops, to spot pheasants roosting. They use catapults to fire heavy ball bearings at the pheasants, knocking them off their perch, dead or close to it. No gun shot to give yourself away, and minimal disturbance to all the pheasants which can be noisy when alarmed. Poachers can develop frightening accuracy with a catapult.

We've found other ball bearings in the same area, so we'll be extra vigilant now. I'm happy to stand watch. Anything to avoid sitting down.

Sheep and Deer and Fox and Dogs

I got up this morning in anticipation of catching the partial solar eclipse, but instead I was treated to the flat grey fog that England is famous for. I missed the lunar eclipse last week for the same reason. All the grandeur of astronomically significant events scuppered by a low front. I sulked for a bit, until the clouds dropped fat snowflakes. Nothing accumulated, but it made a lovely wintry backdrop for my morning chores.

One of my chores is still handfeeding Eudora. Her sight, or perhaps her neurological impairment, is preventing her feeding properly without help. I'm still hoping this is a temporary set-back, and I've called the vet yet again. To tempt her appetite back, I feed her all her favorites: molasses-flavored water, sugar beet, and barley. Ivy is a good tonic for sheep so on shoot days while I'm supposed to be watching birds overhead, I'm picking young ivy leaves and stuffing my pockets full, to bring back for Eudora.

Even I know I'm a bit of a sucker for spoiling her with treats. Eudora can't be that impaired as she's already learned that if she bleats she gets fed. You could argue that I'm the impaired one, handfeeding a sheep on demand. I'm thinking of re-naming her "Eudora, Queen of Sheepa". I draw the line at building her a throne.

From sheep to pigs: we took delivery of half a pig from Peggy, my butchery teacher. She kindly saved me the belly in one piece, so I could try curing my own bacon.

A side-view of the pork belly in cure

I've used her recipe, and the pork is now submerged in its curing solution, salt, and water. I need to leave it soaking for the next 5 days. It will be ready to hang in the chiller for drying on Sunday, just as the two deer hanging in the chiller now will be ready for me to take out and butcher.

I didn't shoot these two; Dave the stalker shot them for me so I could have a bit of time off over Christmas with Mike. I still need to cull three more roe does from that area by the end of March because I culled a buck there last summer. The roe deer management ratio for our area of England is 2.5 does per buck. I will aim to take an older buck out of the area this coming summer.

Nearly all keepers' wives help on shoot days working the dogs or cooking, and in the off-season we help raise the chicks, but only a few of us stalk deer or help with vermin control. We're a large shoot but have a small staff, so we need all the help we can get: outside stalkers, ferretters to control the rabbits, contractors with tractors to put in crops for the pheasant. And willing wives of course.

To add to the workload this time of year, it's mating season for foxes. Vixens call up dog foxes, who flood in looking for a good time. Underkeeper Pete and Stalker Dave have shot a few, but I'm taking the lazy option:

A fox cage, baited with cat food. It's on duty all night protecting my chickens (I already have to get up at 2 a.m. to feed Eudora). I set it this evening, and almost immediate caught Podge in it. She knows a cage trap means tasty treats, and that we'll eventually come and let her out. Gun dogs are too smart for their own good.

And Mike's just this minute told me we're about to adopt a chocolate labrador! It's a temporary arrangement. One of our clients has been looking for another chocolate lab, and we've been offered a 3 year old bitch that needs a new home. I will settle it in with us, and make sure it has all its basic gun dog training before it goes to its new home.

I'm glad it's a labrador, as they're pretty easy going. Spaniels have more energy than I do. However, between 6 dogs and a self-important ewe taking up all the kennel space, I will have to make room for the new dog in the house.

Thankfully, one of the perks of shoot season is that the shoot guests never finish their wine and kindly give the keeper the extra bottles from their well-stocked cellars. The availability of good wine helps me to cope when my husband tells me he's bringing home another dog.

We've been so busy I've not really had time to think about the New Year or relevent resolutions. We celebrate slightly different holidays, based around the rural calendar. Our holiday period starts Christmas eve and officially ends on Distaff Day, which is this Friday. Traditionally Distaff Day is when women resume their work, picking up the distaff and starting to spin wool I suppose. Typically, men's work doesn't start until Plough Monday, two days later than women's work starts. Read into that what you will.

Anyway, it's only 352 more days til Christmas eve.

Meat Group!

Last night, I got at least one of the ingredients for shoot lunches -

A little pricket roe buck, just what I was looking for. He's only a small chap but he should produce about 10 kgs of meat, which is 5 meals for hungry workers. It's a good start.

He's hanging in the chiller, and I'll butcher him in a week when the meat has had some time to relax and mature.

The little buck had the last laugh as I had to drag him a mile back to a track, where I could then pick him up with my truck. I was red in the face, sweating and puffing, even with frequent rest stops.  I had better work on my cardio and dragging technique before the next stalk.

Dakota gets very excited by a successful hunt, and she likes to check on the bounty -

She knows a deer means liver for breakfast.

No time to sit on my laurels. There are 50 meals to make so I'm going to need a few more deer. And there 3 more food groups to source. At least I won't get out of breath harvesting vegetables.

Marriage and Children

"Since we finished early, I might go out with my rifle and see if I can get those deer in the pen. But I have to be back in time for the vicar. Do you want to come?"

Underkeeper Pete's due to get married in a month's time and even a visit from the vicar to plan nuptials doesn't interfere with gamekeeping duties. This was a culling mission to deal with maurading deer so two rifles are better than one, and I might help get him home on time. There's plenty of time to make your wife mad at you after you're married.

The deer were in their regular spot on the side of hill. I picked one up in the scope: a roe doe. She was an easy shot, 50 yards away. I couldn't pull the trigger.

Roe does are out of season as they are starting to give birth to their fawns now. Under special license we can legally shoot any maurading deer causing damage to a commercial enterprise - in this case the pheasant shoot. But it's an emotive issue. I could see she wasn't heavily pregnant, but that doesn't mean she didn't have a young fawn nearby. It was unlikely but not impossible. I simply didn't want to kill her, so I left her to her maurading ways.

I think all the hatching has put me in a birth frame of mind, not a death one. I feel sympathetic for all mothers in springtime.

The buck was another story - a small two-year-old, perfect for culling even if he wasn't doing damage. Roe bucks are in season now. I couldn't get a shot at him, but Pete did.

He'll go in Pete's freezer, and I took the liver home and cooked it up for the dogs' breakfast.

I took the pan out of the oven and thought about how the liver was only doing its job just half an hour ago.

We've just been around and checked our traps - one magpie, no crows, one squirrel tonight. I fed the crows with the squirrel and the magpie with cracked pheasant eggs. The dogs had the leftover eggs for dinner. Feeding time is more like a game of musical chairs. Tonight we're the ones left without a seat and we're forced to make a trip into town to the grocery store for basics like butter and rice, things that we can't fish or trap ourselves.

When I got in from checking traps, this little surprise was waiting for me in the incubator -

She's drying off and warming up under Susan now.

Yes, I'm definitely all about the babies this time of year.

The Big Six

Well, technically it's 7 if you include wild boar. But traditionally the 'Big 6' is a British sporting achievement where the aim is to shoot one of each species of deer found in Britain - red, fallow, sika, roe, muntjac, and chinese water deer - usually within one calendar year. It's a very tame version of the 'Big 7' African Game as, aside from aggravating a grumpy pig, you are unlikely to get mauled and eaten by a labrador-sized herbivore.

I've half-heartedly warmed to the idea when Mike suggested it. I think it's more a male way of thinking, to tick off each species from 'the list', like playing "I spy" or participating in a gory scavenger hunt. And of course, most sportsmen want a trophy specimen from each group to hang on their wall (if the wife says it's ok) or in their shed (if the wife says it isn't).

I'm not much for the trophies. In fact, aside from my medal-winning boar tusks and one good roe head that Mike shot long ago, we haven't got any trophies to display. Both of those are hidden away in corners. Our most useful head is from a poor specimen red deer which Mike 'liberated' from the village hall, and now hangs in our stairway as a hat rack -Trophy hunting aside, I did like the idea of learning more about the life cycle, habitat and social structures of different deer species. I knew a little bit about fallow and roe, as those are my 'bread and butter' deer, common on this estate.

But I didn't know the first thing about Sika, except that 1) they are called 'stags' (as opposed to 'bucks' - it relates to their latin name Cervus) and 2) they originate from Japan (Sika is the japanese word for deer). And 3) that I had been invited to shoot one by Keith Edwards, a friend and deerstalker who manages a large wild herd. (He's in the 'trophies in the shed' category). I did a bit of quick research, and put a few rounds through my .308 rifle to check for accuracy before setting off last night for a guided hunt.

The weather was cooperative, and I watched the orange autumn sunset from the highseat. If I never saw a deer it was still better than being at home doing laundry. But over a few hours as the sun set, we counted 36 deer. The sika are rutting so the stags are trying to round up a 'harem' of ladies. I heard my first sika stag call - a loud roaring whistle that rises in pitch, then falls and ends with a grunt. You can hear young stags, their whistles are higher, almost like their voices haven't dropped yet. I saw hinds (lady deer) with youngsters preparing to survive their first winter, young 'pricket' stags play-fighting with youthful enthusiasm, and seasoned stags sniffing the air to see if any hinds were receptive to their advances. One tried to mount a hind while she grazed but she scooted away to graze somewhere more peaceful, baby in tow.

Keith really wanted me to have a medal-winning stag and, though I was grateful for the generous offer, I would be happy with a cull animal. As it turned out, a heavy-bodied stag, certainly over a decade old with weakening antlers came out of the woods. He presented the best target. He'd sired his fair share of offspring for sure. It was time for him to come out. I dropped him cleanly with the first shot on the other side of the river. We dragging him back and gralloched him, and he came home with me in the back of my truck. I owed Paul ('trophies in the house' category) a deer, and Paul needed a good sized animal right away. There's a Food Fair coming up and Paul is making sausages to sell.
Well done, old man.

I won't keep the head as a trophy, but I will keep the antlers to make my own priest. A 'priest' is a heavy tool for dispatching wounded birds. It's called a priest for the macabre reason that it is delivering the bird's last rites. I have to drill out a section of antler and fill it with lead or shot to increase the weight. I've never made one before so two antlers gives me two chances to get it right.

The best part about getting my sika stag is: I'm now ahead of Mike in the race to finish the 'Big 6'. I still have to attempt the red, the muntjac, and the chinese water deer. I'd better get reading.