Entry Island

All caution dispensed with, they were up and after him, running through the peat bog, splashing through the soft, wet ground. One of them fell, and picked himself up dripping with peaty brown water.

I watched them as they went up and over the rise, George and the stalker well ahead of the others. But there they stopped, surveying the wilderness that lay ahead. A deep valley strewn with boulders, the hills rising steep on both sides. The valley floor was strength-sapping marsh, and the primal landscape beyond was quickly lost in the smirr that drifted through the hills.

From where I lay I could not see what they saw, but it was clear to me that they had lost sight of the stag. The stragglers caught them up on the rise, and there was a short and heated debate before they turned reluctantly and headed back the way they had come.

I could scarcely believe it. My father would have tracked a wounded animal to the ends of the earth to deliver it from pain. And it was clear to me that the poor beast was in agony as he stumbled off into the next valley.

I waited until they had gone back down the glen before breaking cover, then ran down the slope to the place the stag had fallen. The peat bog was churned up where his hooves had fought for grip to get him back on his feet. There was blood in the grass. Dark red, almost black. My heart went out to him. If he had to die, then the least he deserved was a quick dispatch. Only to wound him, then leave him to die in wretched torment, was unforgivable.

I knew what I must do, and set off at a trot in pursuit of him.

Beyond the rise, I picked up his spoor. Although there was a good deal of blood at first, it gradually became less apparent, the wound coagulating, and I was hard pushed to spot any at all. But I knew that the animal would be bleeding inside, and the thought drove me on through the mist and rain, stumbling now, weakened by my hunger and the cold. I looked for broken heather roots and hoofprints in the peat marsh, dropping down to a desperately slow pace, knowing that every wasted moment meant more pain.

After a time I began to despair, not even certain that the water-filled hoofprints I saw were his.

I was close to giving up when I saw him. He had fallen down in a hollow by a small loch. I could hear his distress in the shallow bark of his breathing. I knew that the loss of blood would have starved him of oxygen. He would be dizzy and weak, and in considerable pain if the bullet had clipped the liver.

But I also knew that if he saw me coming he would panic and try to get back on his feet. And if I got too close, those antlers could be lethal. I dropped to one knee and stayed stock-still. He hadn’t seen me, and I was still downwind.

Very slowly I approached him from the rear. One soft, careful step at a time I gained on him, until I saw the steam rising from his coat, and his stertorous breathing filled my ears. I laid down my crossbow and quiver and took out my father’s long hunting knife. I would have to be quick and accurate.

Close enough now to smell him, I was on him in a single move, my knee pushed hard into the back of his neck, pulling his antlers towards me with my left hand. I reached around under his chin with my knife to draw the blade across his throat, severing both the jugular vein and the carotid artery. What little life there was left in his heart pumped the last of his blood out on to the grass.

I slid off him, to lie in the hollow by his head and watch his big doe eyes cloud over, just as my father’s had done. He looked at me now, his life draining away, his pain dying with him. And all I could feel was guilt at the length of time it had taken me to find him.

When he was gone I got to my knees and rolled him on to his back. I grasped the skin of the scrotum and pulled it away from his body to cut it off, and remembered what my father always said when he performed this first, ritual act of the gralloch. You’ll no be needin’ these nae mair. And I ached again at his loss, and the loss too of this fine animal. I was sick of death.

But I forced myself to concentrate now, remembering how my father did this. It was vital, he always said, that the guts be removed intact. Any spillage would contaminate the meat.

I made a small incision and inserted two fingers, palm up, to stop the blade of my knife from catching the intestines, and slid it up towards the base of the sternum, opening up the abdominal wall. And so the gralloch began.

I worked in concentrated silence, with only the sound of my own breathing for company. It was hard, stomach-churning work, and I tried not to think too much about how this had once been a proud, sentient creature.

The fat of the deer was thick and soft when still warm, but it solidified in the cold. It covered my hands and forearms, gore from the cavity congealing in it so that it seemed as if I wore bright red gloves. I grabbed handfuls of sphagnum to try to clean it off, but it was an almost impossible task.