24 hours in Poor Park Woods

I was speaking to someone the other month and we were talking about solo trips. To my surprise he, and many others so it seems, had never done solo trips.

I like meets, but I also love getting out on my own. You can do what you want and chill out. It is a little strange at first, but if, like me, you don't mind your own company, you quickly get used to the solitude. This weekend, after a postponement from last weekend, I was out in Poor Park Woods.

I took my light weight 55 litre pack and, for a change, packed my ground-dwelling Snugpack Stratosphere hooped bivi, 3 litres of water, pre-prepared stew and some bacon and eggs for Sunday morning.

The weather was perfect at 21C. I wandered around the woods all day without a schedule, examining tracks and other sign and explored some areas of the woods I'd not been in before.

At about 5pm I lit a fire and warmed up a stew.

At 8pm I was in position at the north edge of the woods to see if any badgers would emerge out of a sett entrance I had identified. I didn't hold up any hopes. Suddenly, there was a commotion to my right and 2 large fallow does came into view. The lead doe saw me and veered off over the badger sett. The following doe came to a stop right in front of me no more than a few yards away. She didn't seem to realise I was there but soon ran off and followed the first doe. Two yearlings and a young buck followed close behind. I managed to get a picture of a couple of rumps.

I soon realised the reason for this commotion. Two dogs off their leads were chasing the deer through the woods. Amazingly, only one dog spotted me. The other went wandering past.

The next incident was much more serene. I decided to sit by the side of a well used path leading into the woods from a field. I wasn't there long before I saw a Muntjac buck in velvet come and pay me a visit. He was literally only 6 or 7 yards away and I managed to film the whole approach. Have a look at the footage below and see how he uses his nose to try and ID me. He also stamps his feet to try to get me to move and to warn others. I'm pretty sure he didn't quite know what I was even at the end. He certainly didn't look as though he was threatened.

I returned to the camp, lit up the fire again and took in the darkening woods before turning in.

I woke a few times during the night, but I wasn't aware of any nocturnal visitors. During breakfast, I heard the barking of a fallow doe (much deeper and not so shrill as a muntjac) but couldn't locate her. There was no sign of any early morning visitors by looking at the "morning papers" for tracks or spoor either.

After packing up I had a look at the sett entrance. The stick that I'd gently placed over the hole was still in place, which tended to suggest the sett was not occupied.

Exactly 24 hours after entering the woods, I walked out. It was a peaceful, reflective time with a couple of close encounters. I was really pleased with these encounters because it was obvious that I hadn't been easily identified as a human. I put this down mainly to the fact that the fire had de-scented me. But even so, I'm getting ever closer to the wildlife.

Here's the footage of the muntjac buck.