The full days pics are through a click HERE

Day 10 - As usual I woke up around 7am, turned over and wanted to go back to sleep. There was someone moving around upstairs though so I thought I ought to get up, so I did.

The usual for breakfast - porridge with Syrup - nice. Then time to make sarnies for lunch time - Cheese and jam and marmite, it is nice, honest.

I knew what the day ahead held - stalking. Also my knee was feeling good and I had my tubi-grip thing on and a decent helping of deep heat so I was all set to go and looking forward to it. Driving up the glen from Deanich to Alladale was the usual bumpy 25 minute ride seeing lots of stags. I have never been able to photograph them though as we are not allowed to stop in case we spook the stags for the stalkers.

We got up to the main house and it was then decided who would go where - Carol would go off with Ben and Poppy. Mich, Chris and I were to go off with Innes. This should prove to be an interesting day as Innes is supposed to be the best up here. We start off by driving about two thirds of the way back to Deanich, then a third of the way back toward Alladale again. We then drove off the road, down the bank, across the river, up the far bank and onto the foothills on the far side where we parked up.

We all got out of the land rover and started off up the hill. Fortunately the guest we were with today was not too spritely so it was a very gentle stroll up the hill side to the top. We took a brief break when we got almost to the top and then Innes stood up - and stopped. There was a stag just over the hill - at this point all that was visible were the tips of his antlers.

Innes called us up one by one to have a look at the tips and then we ducked down out of site. He then called up the guest and got him into a position where he would be able to shoot from and then got the rest of us into a position where we could all see. This is pretty unusual as normally we would be sitting a long way off from where the actual shooter.

We waited for what seemed quite a while watching the tips bob up and down and occasionally twist as the stag moved around.

We waited for probably only 5 minutes in total until the stag came over the ridge and we could see it. A few moments later a shot rang out and the stag went down.

It was very quick and soon after that Innes was cutting the spinal cord to make sure the stag was dead and then taking out the stomach and entrails that did not need to be taken off the hill.

The next thing to be done was to put ropes onto the stag so that he could be dragged.

Chris and Mich started off the dragging to show me how as I have not actually done any yet, even though I have been out stalking a number of times. Once Chris had pulled a while though I took over and had a go, seemed to go well.

Once we got to the top of the hill and started heading down I took over at the front and Chris stayed at the back to stop the stag from rolling. It was actually fun - with the weight of the stag behind meant I had to lean forward to pull it down the hill, making it feeling a bit like abseiling.

Once we got teh stag to the bottom and the ropes off, we stopped to have our lunch.

After lunch it was time to head back up to Alladale, across the river using an old suspension bridge (that needs a little fixing) then off up the track back toward Alladale. We got probably a mile up the track before we spotted them on the ridge, then they dropped down a little and stopped. We stopped to watch them on the other side of teh glen and saw the stag and two hinds below.

We waited tehre for propbably the best part of an hour and a half. During that time the stag was watching us, then it sat down. Eventually Innes waved at us to carry on up the road to see if the stag would move. We headed back to Alladale, but I believe it stayed put until long after we and they had gone.

Back at Alladale we went to the conference room for a while and I read an artivle about the probability that Lynx did not become extinct in the UK due to climate change but due to pressures from man, either hunting or deforestation.

Then there was a radio call from Innes to bring waders to drag a second deer across the river, so we loaded up and went to drag a deer across the river...

We dragged it across the river, then went back to Alladale and picked up Carol and Ben to go back to Deanich.

Once back 'home' I lit the lounge fire, the boiler fire, then hung some stuff to dry, filled the log basket. We then had tea which was Quiche and backed beans followed by a bath and an eposide of Fire Fly on DVD. This lasted until about 22:30, then off to bed to wait for another day.

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