A Swiss Stag …

… finally appeared out of the bushes. We could see the brown bulk of him moving through the bushes with his harem (extra) but he was rarely in the open. He was at least 600m away from us but, boy, could we hear him and many others on the other side of the valley. It took us two hours to reach the point where we saw him, passing the normal forest into the Dents du Midi reserve (extra). Once there we knew the hunters were not allowed to hunt. Sadly in the Canton of Valais they can shoot up to 700 deer this year and we saw one being pulled up a hillside by a pulley as we walked out. Horrendous, and sadly, necessary, as they do so much damage to the forest. There are only a few wolves to kill them as the wolves are culled too. At least in our canton they are not allowed to hunt deer in the breeding season.