Stalking diary: an unseen roe rut and ground burned bare

The 2026 roe rut never really got going in our part of East Anglia, as far as I can tell. But just because you don’t see the classic roe rutting activity doesn’t mean they haven’t bred. They will have been quietly going about their business through the night when it was slightly cooler, and I expect to see the usual number of kids next spring.

It is nice to be on the estate around the highlight periods of the various species’ ruts. But we don’t sell a huge number of bucks to visiting stalkers and, by August, the vast majority of the easy roebuck culling is already carried out. So we joined the masses and escaped the UK heatwave for the heat of the Balearics instead.

Why a week away matters in a game management job

While I tried to detox from my phone and work as much as I could, it was almost impossible to do because of the various WhatsApp groups we are all involved in. We had some extremely sad news come through from the estate while I was away, which was a reminder to make the most of family and the time we all have with them while we can. The older I get, the more I have started to come round to the mantra of work to live rather than the live-to-work mentality we all go into a job in game management with.

Game and wildlife jobs are definitely a way of life, with strange hours and elements of the role you become obsessive about. But if you are not careful these can quickly become all-consuming, to the point where you agonise over every little detail. Before you know it, you are constantly moaning to those around you about the details that affect you, while they try to reassure you that it will all be all right in the end.

Getting off an estate for a holiday rather than merely taking a few days off really can help you recharge and see things from a fresh perspective. But all too quickly the week away finishes and you are back into the regular revolving pattern of the role.

An early maize harvest and yields a third down

The estate harvest had been completed while we were still away. The bio-maize harvest was underway almost a month earlier than usual, due to the hot weather drying out the crop. Maize is harvested based on its moisture content for clamping as silage before being fed into the bio-digester. As with all crops this year, the yields will be down, and many of them must be at least one-third lower than the usual growing height.

Although the trees and some of the ground vegetation give the impression that there is something for the animals to eat, there really isn’t. Grass and edible weeds on the estate have either been burned off completely or reduced to crispy stems, which must have no appeal for the deer, let alone providing meaningful goodness.

Apart from a few fields of maize left to harvest that haven’t dried out yet, the only remaining vegetation for the deer, hares, rabbits and other animals to eat is hedgerow leaves, fruits and nuts, which are starting to drop due to the heat, or the sugar beet crops and the game cover maize, the last of which has been quite badly eaten by all of the above this year.

It has been an extreme year for all of us on the estate. Hopefully, some carefully placed mustard can fill in the gaps in the covers, and some long-awaited rain can fall soon to rejuvenate the ground before we go into autumn.

Chris Rogers is a deer manager in East Anglia, a CIC head measurer and an NGO committee member.