A brilliant surprise present

Me and dad were out walking very early this morning to watch roe deer just beyond the Pheasant Woods. On the way back, I spotted a key and a keyring lying on a farm track and I spotted it and not dad because dad is so blind.



We thought they might belong to the gamekeeper that looks after the Pheasant Woods, and this evening we walked up to his house. The key wasn't his but must have belonged to someone else who worked on the estate. To say thank you he gave me a brilliant surprise.

It was a fallow deer head !!! We don't have any fallow deer near us, but there were some at the last place he worked. This was the last deer that he had killed, and he had kept the head to give to someone else, but they never came for it, so he gave it to me instead.

The head is smelly and still has all the flesh and fur on. The deer was shot in December, but all the snow we had over the winter kept it fresh. It was strange to hold it and see it with all the flesh on. The gamekeeper thought it was about five years old.

We need to get the flesh off, and some people might boil it and cut the meat off, but I don't think my mum will let me do that. So we're going to wrap it in a plastic bag then bury it somewhere in the woods. We need to find somewhere where walkers don't go, and where it won't be dug up by foxes. Then the bugs and ants will eat all the flesh, leaving just the bones for me to collect.



I don't know much about fallow deer. I know they are bigger than roe deer but smaller than red deer. They can be different colours, but they all have white spots. The deer above is a white fallow deer and he lives at Auchingarrich Wildlife Park, just up the road from me. The deer below are also at Auchingarrich and they are fallow deer too.



I'm looking forward to digging it up in a few months and getting my very first fallow deer skull !!!

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