The weather continues to be calm and clear. (6th December)This is very unusual and I cannot rember the last time we had an Autumn/Winter like this. Great for getting out on the boat to Portree or around the Island to carry out our deer management. It makes life easier for sure.

But it will break and hopefully it will not be too severe, but days like these make the winter much shorter.

First thing we headed off up to the North end to see how the deer population were doing there. The sea was pretty flat, the sun was coming up, it was a beautiful start.

As you would expect on a day like this the deer were up and around the higher ground, plenty hinds, calves and some stags were seen. We made our way to the pier at the now closed MOD Base.

It was a cold morning with snow on the tops, ideal stalking weather.

I dropoped Grant off at the march between us and the MOD land and he made his way into the wind heading North. I spied from the boat for a while then tied up to the pier. Whilst I was doing that I saw a very young stag heading away and it looked like it was carrying a leg. A short while later I received a text to tell me that there was a deer to collect from out on the hill.

It turned out that Grant had spotted the young stag that was limping and his mother . On closer inspection he saw that the stag was in fact carrying one of his front legs and he could clearly see the leg was broken. No hesitation, this is what we do on Rona, we manage the deer unlike a lot of the deer culling that takes place nowadays in mainland Scotland. It seems on land that do not employ the traditional way there is not a lot of proper deer management. It is simply a shoot to kill policy with no respect for traditional seasons, deer welfare, orphaning calves, shooting lactating hinds and so on, the list goes on.

I guess I could write a whole blog and more on that subject.

I am pleased to report that although our Scottish Government has seen fit on the back of persistent lobbying by conservation bodies to have an open season on Red Deer stags, most traditional Estates I know are continuing to respect the 20th of October and only shooting male deer out of season in situations such as this.

So it was that on closer inspection this poor young staggie had a broken leg, perhaps caught in a fence or between boulders. The bone had pierced the skin and its shoulder/leg muscles were wasted. I doubt if he would have survived the winter and it must have been in considerable discomfort. The day was not wasted but the hinds and other deer in this area had disappeared so nothing for it but to return home.

Later on in the day I had to head to Dry Harbour and in a short space of time the clear skies had slowly disappeared and clouds started tro pile in from the South. We did not add to our hind cull but we would consider it a successful day.