Foxglove October 7 2009

When I look back from seeing her scraping sticky web off her muzzle, I see a rabbit sitting on the track, black against the low sun. A second ago there was no rabbit and now there is. I shoot it as it sits, for we are not after any kind of sporting chance here: I need the rabbit meat for my dogs and ferrets, and the landowner needs the rabbit population reduced.

Having checked for any further rabbits close by, I send the dog to bring this one back in, and together we tread softly down the hedgeline, which glints with myriad tiny silver webs. There in the blackthorn thicket, that is so old that it is hollow within but formidably armed front and back, inside is a rabbit crouching, and that too is added to the bag. I then miss a woodpigeon, and the dog looks at me reproachfully.

A rattle in the trees alerts me to the grey squirrel, artfully keeping the trunk between me and it. The dog runs around the tree and the squirrel focuses on her long enough for me to get a shot in, the squirrel falling out for the dog to catch in mid-air.

She knows how squirrels bite and takes no chances: by the time I take this one from her I feel it is more for ferret food than a gourmet human dish, but she has only crushed the ribs, and the best meat on a squirrel is on the back and hindquarters. I have a steady list of people who like to eat squirrel, and the fly-fishermen have good use for the tails.

We continue through the plantation and out again, and the bag grows heavier, though I have to leave several rabbits behind for the fox, because they are in the last stages of myxomatosis. Shooting provides a merciful end for each one, and faster than waiting for the disease to finish them.

Queasily, I see that blowflies have been laying eggs on the still-living flesh; at least the rabbits haven't lived long enough to suffer the next stage of that. I manage at last to shoot a pigeon, which falls in a scattering of feathers, the dog picking up willingly enough but pausing for me to pull the feathers out of her beard before we move on. Worse than gossamer, apparently.

This will cheer her up, for here is a rabbit that she can chase, as she is not a gundog by trade and so can commit what would be a heinous crime for a proper roughshooting dog. She misses her strike and the rabbit pelts into tall undergrowth, but the dog is after it, leaping over the top of the cover in a series of bounces, setting the rabbit moving again and goalkeeping it away from the shelter of the brambles.

She picks it up and a tendril of weed also, trailing a long skein of bobbled green after her as she brings it in. After all that work, this rabbit is in the early stages of myxomatosis, but it is heavy enough to make ferret food, and so goes into the bag.

We are nearly back at our starting point before I see another rabbit. I shoot it on the edge of a patch of bracken and bramble, and am not surprised to find that it is badly diseased. Something moves in the greenery ahead of me and begins to rise out of the bitter bracken. It is a vast set of palmated antlers, below which gleam a pair of large very annoyed dark eyes.

Flies cluster on his forehead: if I had been more observant, the cloud of flies above his resting-place would have told me he was there. I back off with a mental apology for disturbing him, and the fallow buck sinks his head back down out of sight.

Not so much Monarch of the Glen as Baron of the Bracken, but we are almost at the rut, and big chaps like this one have a lot on their minds just now. Soon the woods will fill with their groaning cries, the clashing of antlers, and rank stench of buck in the breeding season, and I will admire from a safer distance.