Stalking diary: a slow roe rut and a young guest’s first buck

As I write this at the end of July, the roe rut has made a steady start on the estate, with bucks following does around but hardly chasing frantically. Once you see bucks with does it’s always worth a call to see if you can get something out of their bed, but so far, roebucks running blindly into the call haven’t materialised.

Frustratingly this lack of calling success has continued on my recent video for Shooting & Country TV. We have now filmed over six ruts and, while we have had success in one way or another, in terms of calling results we have never bettered the 2021 rut, where we had so much action we had to split the footage into two episodes.

Why roe rut activity varies so much from one estate to the next

While rutting and calling have been poor at Euston so far, only 15 minutes down the road near Bury St Edmunds, on a recent Saturday afternoon, the rut was in full swing and I called two bucks in to within 20m with ease. This just goes to show the variables around deer behaviour. Dates are never set in stone, and activity can be influenced by weather, cropping, deer densities and individuals within the population, among other factors.

The rut is always popular with clients, but it also falls in the school holidays, which recently gave regular client Ed a good opportunity to get his grandson Flynn out stalking with us. I meet a few people who watch the videos and it’s always great to hear their mostly positive feedback, but it’s fair to say that Flynn has watched all the videos in fine detail and was well briefed on how, why and where we stalk on the estate.

With the heat ramping up again, I was concerned that our run of dry luck would continue, and as we headed along dusty tracks and over stubble fields it wasn’t looking promising. As we arrived in the corner of a field opposite a maize cover crop, a doe ran out of the maize with a young buck in hot pursuit. They were already some 250m away and I gave a few optimistic calls to try to turn them, but they took no notice. We watched them run back into the crop lower down and then continued along a track to the top of the maize, where I had seen an older buck on several occasions.

As we rounded the corner we spotted the young buck on his own in another stubble field; the doe had given him the slip, or the older buck had taken over. Because of the backstop we needed to get closer and call him towards a dip in the field that would give us a safe shot. Having crept as close as we could along the edge of the maize, we called quietly and, although his reaction couldn’t be described as enthusiastic, he wandered slowly towards us and stood obligingly at around 80m.

A young guest’s first taste of the roe rut

With the shot taken and the buck dropping on the spot, Ed and Flynn walked up to him with great excitement. Although we hadn’t seen many deer, we had taken a buck and given Flynn a taste of what roe stalking in the rut can be like. Experiences like this, particularly with family members, can last a lifetime, and hopefully this has started the lad on a path to taking up stalking, something we all need to encourage youngsters to do for the long-term future of ethical deer management.

Chris Rogers is a deer manager in East Anglia, CIC head measurer and NGO committee member. For stalking opportunities, email eustondeerhunting@yahoo.co.uk.