Mentioning the young dead deer on the path yesterday reminded me of encountering a deer last year when walking on the outskirts of Hudswell Woods on the valley top where the hay meadows are. I spotted what I thought was a large dog about 250 m away but quickly realised it was a deer browsing in the long grass. This was in mid-June. Because the wind was blowing towards us and away from the deer as we approached, they have a superb sense of smell, I knew that we could get very close to it because roe deer have very poor eyesight and the rustling of the grass as the deer walked would mask our approach because they have very good hearing. So, every time it walked we walked and then we stopped when it stopped. We did this for about 10 minutes until we were only around 10 m away and he could still not see us. I am pretty sure it knew something was there but because of its low profile in the very long grass and the simple fact that it could not smell or hear any danger it was completely unaware of us. Clifford was a very good boy that day: he stayed back on the path without being asked to , to stop some other walkers tramping down to see us and to see what we were looking at which would of course scared the deer off immediately as soon as it heard footsteps. It is very easy to understand how primitive man could outwit animals, kill and eat them.