Deer in Norfolk: rest in peace, Bambi

We can do a lot of things that deer can’t do – stones, cooking venison ragu. But we can’t smell people from 400 meters away. This gives deer several advantages – it’s easy for them to detect our presence, to know when to flee a scene. That being said, deer don’t have access to bolt action rifles, unlike my friend Patrick. The advantage returns to the man!

It’s 9.15pm and we’re crawling across a meadow in north Norfolk; there is not much light left and the heat of the day has broken. Good conditions for stalking deer they tell me. We are most likely to find muntjac – salty things originating from Southeast Asia. I don’t know how they ended up in a field near King’s Lynn, but I do know that they invaded the village with alarming force and made quite a nice dinner.

The whole endeavor requires patience, restraint, a kind of inner calm that does not come naturally to Silver Spoon. Along with sudden movements, deer – the sensitive creatures that they are – also dislike loud noises. I wonder if now would be a bad time to tell everyone I’m still recovering from a bad cough? It’s certainly handy enough to scare a muntjac. It doesn’t matter. Because after just a few minutes out in the meadow, we spot one on a fence and well – rest in peaceBambi. It was not a fair fight.

Deer, everyone around here will tell you, really should be subject to enthusiastic culling regimes: they breed at unsustainable rates, strip forest floors of all their leaves and are a general threat to biodiversity. Birds especially suffer at the hands (hooves?) of predatory buzzards – as they graze their way through the ecosystem, depriving the nightingales and warblers of their lunch. I don’t want to invoke Peta’s wrath too much (calmness and tolerance are not virtues traditionally associated with the animal rights group), but I find this argument entirely convincing.

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It was generally considered illogical to give me a gun, so Bambi was shot by someone who knew what they were doing. You can get a couple of pounds of meat from your garden variety muntjac. But as we approached the poor boy – who had not much desire for this world – he was indeed very hard to make out in the tall grass. This is about the size of a cocker spaniel or an extremely large rabbit, I thought. In fact, muntjacs are so small (and ours especially so) that I can hardly dignify them with the specification “deer”. A wad of wet paper shot through a straw can probably get one out.

At this point I encourage the scoundrels among you to look away, or the hell up. After you’ve killed the little guy, you have to satisfy the deer stalker in his absurd euphemism. “Field dressing” is the process of breaking down the deer, right there on the fence. The entrails are left to the crows, the heart is saved for the especially obliging spaniel with us. And then the head? Sawed off in an eerie white room full of dead pigeons. The same for the legs. The deer is hung overnight, to be processed by a butcher tomorrow. The next morning a woman sees us carrying the headless creature through the strange streets of Holt. “What the hell is this?” she whispers to her partner. “I promise, it’s not a dog,” I want to whisper back.

For anyone after a quick lunch, it’s all a bit off. But those ends go, justifying the bloody means. The neck is firm, good for ragù – which itself is good with Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and would probably be even better with a northern Rhône wine. But look, I just saw someone saw a deer’s head off. As long as it has an ABV above 13 percent, I’m happy. Loin fillets are the so-called premium cuts. And as deer go, the muntjac is gentle, tireless—more lamb than deer.

I have no intention of moralizing, of flipping through a Rolodex of all the reasons we should or shouldn’t hunt; to beat the good and the bad. You’ve heard it before, you’ve made up your mind. But dinner has to come from somewhere.

(Further reading: Fish Central: Pollock is great, it’s not their fault the Brits can’t do chips)