"It's A Deer, Dear"

Today we went to Richmond Park, in West London, to see the deer rut -- the annual mating display in which the stags paw the ground, thrash their antlers in the bracken, throw back their heads to roar enthusiastically, and fight one another for the right to, er, bonk as many hinds as they can. Or so suggests the BBC's Autumnwatch programmes: but while this is undeniably what deer do at this time of year, we had trouble finding them -- the Park is a popular attraction, and what you mostly see when you swing your binoculars towards a movement in the distance is a kiddie bicycling along followed by its doting parents. Most certainly not what we were looking for!

But persistence paid off. We saw a small group of fallow deer hiding in the trees early in the afternoon; then a larger group later on, out in the open -- several hinds, and even what appeared to be a late-developing fawn being nuzzled by its mother. As we watched this group through our binoculars, obeying the Park's advice to approach the animals no closer than 50 metres, we saw innumerable family groups sauntering up to within a few feet of them, one woman getting so close as to appear to be trying to stroke a reclining buck's brow. WTF? Don't these people realise that deer are wild animals, liable to react adversely to this sort of thing?

We waited expectantly for someone to be gored bloodily in front of us, but instead the stag leaped up and moved off through the bracken away from the humans, his hinds following -- clearly the sensible thing to do (much more sensible than the twattish humans). We continued our walk, heading towards the sound of bellowing deer; and came out suddenly on an open expanse where a couple of red deer stags were disporting themselves: no antler thrashing in the bracken, but lots of throwing heads back and roaring. A group of hinds grazed placidly nearby. And then, as we watched, one of the stags began advancing towards us. Had we grown antlers, were they looking for a food handout?

No. We realised, with a slight frisson of alarm, that we were standing between him and one of his hinds, and moved rapidly to the side -- Judith more rapidly than I, because I was still trying to take photos of this advancing creature. It crossed the path to collect its hind, turned to look at me...turned back to check that its hind was secure...and made a step or two in my direction.

Time to retreat. I turned smartly through 180 degrees and walked away along the path we'd been following. Judith was ahead of me, but some way ahead of me. I could hear the clicking of hooves on the path behind me, and knew that I needed to somehow make myself look non-threatening. "Behind you," she said, "Look behind you." That, I thought, would not be a good idea: look these animals in the eye, even with a camera, and they will charge.

Judith said that it crossed the path behind me less than 7 metres away. Dangerous though it would have been, I wish I could have turned to take its photograph.