Borrowed Time

Feeling quite dejected today, I heard of the death this last weekend of another one of our local mature stags. A stag I've been familiar with for a while. In actual fact I probably captured some of the last snaps of him just last week in all of his glory with a group of hinds that he has grouped together during the rut.

This stag has up until this year been very secretive and was not often seen. I put a lot of time in so probably saw him more than most.

Last year I watched him challenge the dominant stag in a rutting area and finally manage to push him out. He fought off a challenger before he himself was moved on by another more dominant stag.

This year he moved into an area vacated by a stag injured last year and that has proved to be his downfall, that and the fact that he seemed to have a new confidence this year that saw him openly strutting his stuff at dawn.

The local trophy hunters have taken their opportunity and met him at dawn with cold steel and a float to drag his bloody lifeless body of the fields, leaving nothing but a pool of blood in the grass and antler marks where his head it the floor.

The stag pictured above is not him but we know that that stag is also falling under the gaze of local trophy hunters, they have been seen in his very near vicinity. He is truly living on borrowed time.....