Hind shooting in the winter can be hard work.
Photograph by Iain Thornber
Eye to the hills
WINTER is an important time of the year for Highland stalkers. It is the season when the red deer hinds, the females of the species, are carefully selected and culled. The short winter days can be long and difficult for these gentlemen of the hills who go about their work in the most uncomfortable and trying conditions. Chilled to the marrow by the bracing northerly winds from Scandinavia, soaked to the skin from crawling through peat bogs and lying for hours in melting snow and ice, their task is indeed a hard one.