The Suffolk Grand Slam

This coveted stalking experience not only raises crucial funds for the GWCT but also enhances our understanding of the landscape and its stewardship

- Written by Sam Carlisle Photography by Callum McInerney-Riley

CAN YOU see that black shape standing against the reeds?” Will Waterer thought he could.

I couldn't. Not with the naked eye, not with binoculars and certainly not through the narrow uncertainty of a riflescope. It was still so dark that it felt like dawn might never come. I couldn't tell if the thin light there was represented the first cracks of sun or waning moonlight. Waterer sighed in that patient way guides do when their guest is clearly failing the eye test. “We'll just have to wait.”

So we waited, on the sandy corner of an East Suffolk field where carrots grow straight and potatoes fatten. Behind us the land tipped backwards into woodland and forwards into a reed-choked creek, only a mile or so upstream before it empties into tidal marshes. A barn owl flitted by, pale and silent as cigarette smoke, with sharper vision than me. Dawn is a privilege of the deerstalker. It often arrives too quickly for our liking but not when there's a deer-shaped smudge that refuses to resolve itself into shootable definition. That's when dawn is a miserly old thing, eking out light like a landlord counting coins. I stared through the scope every 30 seconds, trying to separate my cross hairs from the silhouette, until the blob drifted off into cover and, just like that, opportunity was gone.

But dawn did come, in streaks of salmon pink. And with it another pair of muntjac: neat little deer with hunched shoulders and eternal expressions of surprise. This time there was no mistake. Cross hairs, breathe, squeeze. The crack echoed across the field. I cycled the bolt, adjusted my aim, pulled the trigger and the second deer folded as well. In the silence that followed, we poured coffee from a flask, steam rising, as the sun spilled over Suffolk. The stalk was not done though, not even close.