A gun for company

I choose a gun for company.

That statement can make some people uncomfortable. But the rifle is simply the thing that draws me into the countryside with greater purpose and attentiveness than I might otherwise possess.

Without it I would still walk the hills, I do. I would still admire a frosted hedgerow, pause to watch a buzzard circling on a rising current of air, or stand quietly beneath the beeches listening to the first blackbird greet the dawn. But the rifle changes the quality of my attention. It slows me down. It sharpens my senses. It encourages me to notice.

In a world increasingly designed to distract us, there is value in that.

Nominally I am a deer stalker. Yet often the greatest pleasure of my time with a rifle in hand has remarkably little to do with deer. More often than not it begins with darkness and silence.

There is a particular moment before dawn when the countryside seems suspended between two worlds. The foxes and owls still belong to the night, but the day is already gathering itself beyond the horizon. Frost hangs on every blade of grass. The woods stand motionless. Even the air seems reluctant to move.

Then, suddenly, everything changes.

A robin begins. A blackbird answers. Somewhere in the hedgerow a wren joins the chorus and within moments the world erupts into chaos. Pheasants clatter through the undergrowth. Wood pigeons shift heavily in the branches above. Rabbits appear from hedge bottoms and rough pasture.

The dawn chorus is often described as beautiful, which it is, but beauty alone does not quite capture it. There is something violent about it too, a joyful upheaval, as though the land itself were shrugging off darkness and announcing that another day has begun.

To witness this regularly is a privilege.

Many people experience the countryside as scenery. They see it from a car window, across a dog walk, or during a weekend outing. There is nothing wrong with that. But carrying a rifle encourages a different relationship. You move more slowly. You stop more often. You begin to notice details that would otherwise pass unseen.

A line of fox tracks stitched neatly across the frozen grass. The badger path worn smooth through generations of nightly use. The faint slot marks of the deer that crossed the ride before first light.

Spend enough time there and gradually the countryside stops being a backdrop and becomes a manuscript. Every track, feather, scrape, call and scent tells a story. The landscape becomes something to be read rather than merely observed. In doing so, it teaches patience. It also teaches humility.

Deer are particularly effective instructors in this regard. I have spent enough mornings in their company to know that they are often not where I expect them to be and more often than not they are aware of me before I am aware of them. Many times I have walked through woodland believing myself alone, only to glimpse or sense movement behind me and realise that a roe doe has been watching my progress for several minutes. I have stood scanning a hillside with binoculars only to discover that the deer I sought had already slipped away unseen.

These are their woods.

I may know the footpaths and boundaries, but they know every fold of ground, every hidden crossing point, every subtle change in the wind. Their hearing exceeds mine. Their sense of smell exceeds mine. Their awareness exceeds mine. However experienced I become, the deer remain capable of exposing my mistakes with almost embarrassing efficiency.

That is part of why I admire them.

Deer have taught me more about patience than any book. They have taught me how little I truly notice. They have taught me that stillness is a skill that extends far beyond a mere absence of movement. Most importantly, they have taught me that confidence and competence are not the same thing.

The older I become, the less I think of my stalking as an exercise in mastery and the more I think of it as an exercise in learning. A man spends enough time alone in the countryside and eventually discovers that the landscape is not the only thing being studied.

The woods are poor places for self-deception. Impatience reveals itself quickly. So does carelessness. Vanity, complacency and distraction all make themselves known with remarkable efficiency. But the woods reveal better qualities too. Patience. Discipline. Curiosity. Gratitude.

I sometimes think this is why so many people are drawn repeatedly into wild places. The countryside strips away many of the comforts and distractions that normally occupy the mind. Left alone with weather, wildlife and one’s own thoughts, certain truths become difficult to avoid.

One of those truths concerns time. Modern life measures time in weeks, quarters and calendar years. The countryside keeps a different calendar entirely. The passing of the year is marked by the first frost, the emergence of bluebells, the arrival of migrant birds, the rutting calls of deer, the fall of beech leaves and the shortening of daylight. Spending time outdoors encourages you to notice these rhythms. Gradually the seasons cease to be abstract divisions in a diary and become living realities.

This, perhaps more than anything else, creates a sense of belonging.

For a few hours, moving quietly through woodland and field, I cease to feel like a visitor. I become another creature governed by daylight, weather and season. The deer belong here more completely than I ever will, but I find comfort in knowing that I am subject to many of the same forces. Frost bites equally at us both. Rain soaks us both. Dawn arrives for us both.

That sense of belonging is increasingly rare. So too is the freedom that accompanies it.

There is a particular freedom in walking alone before dawn with no audience and no purpose beyond the morning itself. Emails, meetings, deadlines and obligations recede into the distance. The concerns that seemed urgent the previous day often appear strangely trivial beneath a winter sky. For a few hours the modern world loosens its grip. And perhaps that brings me to the question that many people find most difficult.

Death.

Modern society often treats hunting as though it introduces death into an otherwise innocent world. Yet every human life depends upon death somewhere beneath it. Fields are cleared. Habitats altered. Animals displaced. Forests felled. Roads built. Crops harvested.

Life feeds upon life.

The difference is not that some people participate in this reality and others do not. The difference is whether we choose to acknowledge it.

Wild venison is healthy, sustainable and ethically sourced. I believe all of those things. Yet they are not the reason I carry a rifle. If organic nutrition alone were the objective, a visit to the supermarket would be considerably easier.

The truth is simpler.

I prefer honesty.

I would rather acknowledge my place within the natural order than pretend I stand apart from it. That does not mean death should be treated casually. Quite the opposite. To look properly at a deer is to admire it first. If reverence is absent, then something important has been lost.

And that is the contradiction many struggle to understand.

I admire deer profoundly. I spend countless hours watching them, learning from them and being humbled by them. Sometimes, when circumstances are right and a decision has been made, one dies.

There is no triumph in that. Only gratitude and responsibility.

Perhaps the real lesson is that nature accommodates contradictions more comfortably than we do. The fox and the rabbit. The owl and the vole. The hawk and the pigeon. Life and death exist together, inseparable and ancient.

The deer understand this perfectly. The woods understand it too.

And so, in the end, I choose a gun for company not because it reminds me of death, but because it reminds me of life. It teaches me to pay attention. To move carefully. To remain humble. To keep learning. It reminds me that the countryside is not scenery but community, not backdrop but teacher. The deer are part of that lesson, but so too are the blackbirds, the foxes, the rabbits, the frost and the first light of morning.

For a few hours, walking beneath the beeches with a gun for company, I remember what it feels like to belong.