Bog Myrtle & Peat

It was a bright, crystalline morning on the hill. We had started early to find a doe as the sun rose, but a fiercely cold wind in the north blew all life from the hill. Several snipe rose up from the moss and a lone golden plover passed by mid-morning, but it was otherwise hard to reconcile this emptiness with the jumping, swaying throng of summer. Of course the grouse were in good health, and several pairs rose up and away at waist height along the contours. I like the expression of an old gamekeeper friend in the Grampians, who says that healthy birds look like they’re freshly pressed from the mould. These birds were as fat and fine as they could have been, paired up and ready for all-comers.

We brewed some coffee and stared into the wind for as long as the cold would allow, then climbed back down along the usual paths, staring out to sea towards the Isle of Man. Lines of geese clacked and chattered against the horizon as we descended, and I enjoyed the spectacle so much that I almost overlooked a small dead body in the rushes.

Here was a young deer; a buck, lying half-curled up in the grass. The corpse was immaculately preserved and could hardly have been more than a day or two old, but I was immediately struck by its size – it was a runt; a tiny little scrap of bone and sinew. Healthy roe kids should be well grown and bouncing along with their mothers at this time of year, growing ever less dependent by the day. This little beast was no bigger than a kid you might find in mid July, and almost every bone was visible through the skin. I ran my hands over its coat and found it lumpy and crusted – there were lots of ticks, particularly behind the ears and on the shins, but there had surely been more when the body had been warm. On closer exploration, there were no signs of liver fluke and the internal organs were all in pretty good condition – the signs seemed to suggest a silent, solitary wastage into death.

Walking home with a roe in the bag on a cold November day in 2014, the dog brought me a very similar runt. The little figure wriggled and bellowed as it was dragged in over the heather, and I initially thought it was a hare. The dog had not done any harm to the kid, but it was clearly not long for this world – I query the sanity, health or resilience of any animal which can be caught by my chubby old dog.

I afterwards wondered why this kid’s awful screams had not summoned up any assistance. I have distant memories of seeing a working collie stumble to a halt in the bracken during the gathering of some sheep several years ago. The dog had accidentally found a roe kid, and the infant set up such a caterwaul of misery that the doe came rushing in to defend her youngster. She was so determined that the dog retreated with its tail between its legs, but this was in late June or early July when maternal instinct is strong to the point of insanity. Any of the ties which bind a mother to her offspring had probably been worn desperately thin with the November kid I found in 2014. If the mother had not abandoned her ailing offspring altogether when my dog discovered it, she probably breathed a sigh of relief to find the matter closed.

I can only conclude that here was a second runt; a particularly dull and ill-thriven kid, seen off by a brief succession of very cold nights. A mixture of hard frost and pelting rain has signalled the onset of winter in Galloway, and having scraped together enough enthusiasm to endure a mild autumn, the little deer had nothing left to give. I wonder how many roe die like this in secret every year, having failed to make the grade.