THE DEER HUNTER

Living near Bushy Park, one of the Royal Parks, we're privileged to take our walks and cycle rides in the company of deer.  At the entrance we are reminded not to make contact, not to approach within ten metres or get between them and their young. Yesterday in the warm equinox sunlight and deep shadow, photographers were out in force making contact outside the defined safety limits.  Anything for a good photo, eh?  No, not just a good photo but an award winning photo. The shops in the high street are full of good photos of deer; on their own, resting with iconic antlers poking out of the long grass, like a Georgia O Keefe bone painting, groups of young fawn, nervous, twitching, their speckled backs merging in the autumnal hues or a single startled speciman. Even the local rugby club has an antler as their club motto and on their strip.  Boys cavort like young stags on the rugby pitch.

     In September and October there is a deer cull, which takes place after the park is closed.  I’m not sure how it works but firearms are involved. I imagine a specially commissioned possy of Scottish Highlanders in kilts and deer-stalker hats on their stomachs elbowing their way through the bleached grass like soldiers in search of the enemy.

      Lyme disease is prevalent in the park and tics need to be dealt with immediately.  I’m not sure if they are in the grass or fall from the trees but cycling through the park I make sure I keep my helmut on and avoid the long grass. That means I keep within the health and safety regs on at least two counts and lessen my anxiety of being charged by a bellowing stag who may not have noticed I’m outside the ten metre range, as he trundles across my path in, ‘I’m the king of the park-get out of my way,’ attitude.  I also carry a small tin of Vaseline, which is supposed to affixiate them. The tics of course.

        Deer have been in the park since Henry V111’s day, when he stocked his land with hare, rabbit, pheasant and deer for hunting and eating purposes. Not just one of each obviously.   At a recent talk on the history of Bushy Park by John Shaef, a local historian, we saw maps of how the park’s landscape hasn’t changed essentially since that time. Old Victorian photos of children feeding the deer, with captions such as, ’Oh dear!’ show how times have changed even if the landscape hasn’t.   Until recently the biggest cause of their death (besides culling) was car accidents. A major road goes right through the centre of the park. Now, according to an article in the London Evening Standard in nearby Richmond Park, it’s cyclists. Not by running them over, but by discarding their gel packs from races. Post-mortem examinations of deer have shown their stomachs full of litter. This clogs their digestion systems leading to starvation.  Rather like fish bloated with plastic in our oceans.

    So it was with great schadenfreude that I laughed to myself at an elder running through the long grass, her hand clasped on her handbag as if a stag was chasing her with a view to mugging. Then I realised it was a lovely Chinese woman who we’d met at Pilates at the Age UK Centre for Well Being.  She jumped like a startled young fawn when I shouted out her name, her hand up to shade her eyes from the sun, and surprisingly didn’t recognise us on our bikes as she’d only seen us rolling over on the floor doing pelvic muscle exercises on the one other occasion we’d met.   I even had to shout out our names to prompt her memory. She was most gracious and humoured us well even if she didn’t know who the hell we were.

 Next month is the rutting season, when I may have reason to be really afraid, that’s unless a lyme tic gets me first.