Deerstalking in Norfolk: requiescat in pace, Bambi
We can do a lot of things that deer can’t – calculus, cooking venison ragù. But we cannot smell people from 400 yards away. This confers some advantages on deer – it is easy for them to detect our presence, to know when to flee a scene. That being said, deer don’t have access to bolt-action rifles, unlike my friend Patrick. Advantage back to man!
It is 9.15pm and we are creeping through a meadow in north Norfolk; there is not much light left and the heat of the day has broken. Good conditions for deer stalking, I am told. We are most likely to find muntjac – runty things originally from South-East Asia. I don’t know how they ended up in a field near King’s Lynn, but I do know that they have taken over the countryside with alarming force, and happen to make a rather nice dinner.
The whole endeavour requires patience, restraint, a kind of internal stillness that does not come naturally to Silver Spoon. Along with sudden movements, deer – sensitive creatures that they are – also do not like loud noises. I wonder if now would be a bad time to tell everyone I am still convalescing from a nasty cough? It is certainly voluble enough to spook a muntjac. Never mind. Because after just a few minutes out in the meadow we spot one in a hedgerow, and well – requiescat in pace, Bambi. It wasn’t a fair fight.
Deer, everyone around here will tell you, really should be subject to enthusiastic culling regimens: they multiply at unsustainable rates, strip forest floors of all their foliage and are a general menace to biodiversity. Birds especially suffer at the hands (hooves?) of the rapacious muntjac – as they graze their way through the ecosystem, depriving nightingales and warblers of their lunch. I don’t much want to invoke the ire of Peta (composure and tolerance are not virtues traditionally associated with the animal rights group) but that argument seems perfectly compelling to me.
It was broadly considered unsensible to give me a gun, so Bambi was shot by someone who knew what they were doing. You can get a couple of kilograms of meat from your garden-variety muntjac. But as we approached the poor boy – not long for this world – he really was rather hard to spot in the long grass. That’s about the size of a cocker spaniel or a freakishly large hare, I thought. In fact, muntjac are so small (and our one especially so) that I can hardly even dignify them with the specification “deer”. A wad of wet tissue paper fired through a straw could probably take one out.
At this point I encourage the squeamish among you to look away, or man the hell up. Once you have assassinated the little guy, you must indulge the deer stalker in his absurd euphemism. “Field dressing” is the process of disemboweling the deer, right there, in the hedgerow. The innards get left for the crows, the heart saved for the particularly obliging spaniel with us. And then the head? Sawn off in a scary white room full of dead pigeons. Same for the feet. The deer is hung overnight, to be processed by a butcher tomorrow. The next morning one woman sees us carrying the headless, footless creature through the quaint streets of Holt. “What the fuck is that?” she whispers to her partner. “I promise, it’s not a dog,” I want to whisper back.
For anyone after a quick lunch, it is all a bit of a palaver. But there goes those ends, justifying the bloodthirsty means. The neck is tough, good for ragù – which itself is good with Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and would probably be even better with a northern Rhône wine. But look, I’ve just watched someone saw a deer’s head off. So long as it has an ABV over 13 per cent I am happy. The loin fillets are the so-called premium cuts. And as deer go, muntjac is mild, un-gamey – more lamb than stag.
I don’t intend to moralise, to flip through a Rolodex of all the reasons we should or shouldn’t hunt; to rattle off the pros and cons. You have heard it before, you have made up your mind. But dinner has to come from somewhere.
[Further reading: Fish Central: the pollock is great, it’s not their fault the British can’t make chips]
