Our little, mile-away hills were murky and damp when we set off on my birthday walk, but it wasn’t long before I received my first present – the sun came out. A second gift followed quickly, when we spotted the fallow deer on the hillside below us. The rich, autumnal light picked out the animal’s spot-sprinkled flanks. We could see the huge antlers too: a fully-grown fallow buck’s antlers can measure nearly three quarters of a metre in length. Lying nonchalantly in the long grass, the buck was chewing the cud.