In search of a Furness stag

The wild, stocky and superbly antlered red stags of the Graythwaite estate live up to their elusive reputation during an exhilarating dawn stalk

- Adrian Dangar

I AM STANDING on the summit of Black Brows in the heart of Grizedale Forest shortly after dawn on a soggy October morning and looking west across a rolling swell of brown woodland to the distant silhouette of the Old Man of Coniston. There is nothing to betray the presence of the few houses and roads that lie concealed within the folds of this spectacularly wild landscape, which is bordered to the east by the 10½-mile-long Windermere lake and to the west by Coniston Water. Unlike the open and more popular areas of the Lake District further north, this part of the Furness Fells (the name given to a plethora of steep hills lying north of Barrow-in-Furness) is almost entirely smothered in trees.

Grizedale means ‘valley of the pigs’. The wild boar have long departed but the 9½-square-mile forest is the last stronghold of what locals claim is a unique strain of wild red deer. Over the centuries Furness deer have evolved into short-legged, stocky beasts, the heavy stags characterised by magnificent broad-beamed antlers of up to 16 points and an uncanny ability to lead reclusive and secretive lives. From the late 19th century up until the start of the Second World War their ancestors were hunted by the Oxenholme Staghounds, whose → country extended from Morecambe Bay in the south to Windermere in the north, but the hound has long since been replaced by the rifle as the most effective method of control, which is essential for commercial forestry interests.