From my Facebook page responding to photo of a hedgehog

 "Smashing photo that . I'm getting Fiona a half decent SLR? , I think its called that so she can take some good photos because she's into that . I find the locations for her and  the good spots . Really wish we had the SLR a few months ago when watching a Roe Deer , just in a wood on a valley side and then it just bent its legs and settled itself down.  Wonderful!

Roe Deer have poor eye sight , brilliant smelling and hearing abilities though. They can detect scents they don't like months old and hear sounds from miles away. Fiona, me and Miles stalked one through a field several years back. It was July and the grass was long and it was about 200 metres away  upwind from us . We approached slowly and I knew it would  not  be able to distinguish us from the backround until we were around 50 metres away and even then if we stayed stock still it would have a job knowing what we were . To get really close , and past its hearing defences , everytime it moved we did and the sound of it moving through the long grass as it wandered and browsed masked our sounds of  pursuit . When it stopped we did  and it had no idea we were there. I got us to 5 metres of it , well within spear range if I was after it and even then when it stopped and looked around it still wasn't quite sure what we were because we were totally still and hard to distinguish from the backround .  After looking at it for a bit I waved my hands to give it a scare because that  was one dumb Deer that needed educating into some of the dangers in a Roe Deers life . Sometimes Roe Deer need educating.

 I was very tempted to bag it with my bare hands for the freezer but wasn't sure of the legality of that! Clifford was great , he was only ten at the time but kept a small group of hikers  back up at the path with the solemn words " Stay back my Dad is stalking a dear " . Great fun and I always liked to give experiences like that to the lads .  I know it is not PC these days but I believe that kids should be given the opportunity to hunt and kill and then eat animals that are in plentiful supply it sort of connects them to a major  part of being human particulary the meat eaters among them . I offered this to my lads but only  the sort of hunting that I know which is trapping and maybe using ferrets.  Even today walking  in the coutryside around Richmond in Swaledale we come across young men with ferrets using them to trap rabbits . A couple of young guys we saw had about 20 of them and they sell them to the butchers.

One of the deepest and saddest and only part of my marriage  that I really think is wrong is that Fiona won't let me keep a ferret or two. Of course in York in the early '80s I used to date Toni Bunnel the ferretologist  She has a  PhD in ferrets so I really like them . Brilliant hunters and lovely animals .  Boo for Fiona!"