I was half way to my outside study when I had that almost eerie sense of being watched. Eventually I saw the roe deer, a doe, standing on the dam at the far edge of the pond. She was just staring at me, motionless apart from the mouth that was still chewing away. Grass hung, incongruously, from either side of her mouth. She was already rapidly losing her rich coppery-coloured coat of summer and the comparatively drab winter coat was very evident.
The secret was not to stop, so I went into my study and then the doe carried on grazing. Just occasionally she would stop and look in my direction and at the last place she had seen me, until eventually she moved away.
Such feelings of being watched are not unusual. Once I was passing a dense thicket when that sense came over me. I stared at the thicket, including with binoculars, but could not see anything apart from branches, yet the feeling was as strong as ever.
At last I saw a movement. It was two great tits on some small branches and they were pecking away as if they had found some food.
After a while I realised there was something different and that what the great tits were exploring was a set of sika antlers. It was only when I moved again that the stag seemed to lose its nerve and ran off into the adjoining woodland.
It is, of course, not only deer that watch you, as on one occasion when I was out stalking a red deer stag, albeit with a camera rather than a rifle. I had stalked one huge stag for more than an hour and then that sense again. I looked round to see a fox staring at me as it sat on a peaty mound to get a better view. Could there have been a look of amusement on its face?
