A Wild Deer

Wild deer, Scotland

One Autumn a few years ago I stayed at Kingshouse on the Eastern end of Glen Coe.  Over the years its somewhere I've stayed on several occasions.  Initially camping at the back by the stream, later in the bunkhouse then more recently in the actual hotel.  I recall on some of the early trips occasionally seeing the odd deer just before sunrise.  I even recall slowly making my way towards one that was about 200 metres away but it sensed my interest and disappeared into a background almost the same colour as itself long before I got close. 

So, on a more recent trip I was surprised to find several of them in daylight coming right up to the hotel, moving past parked cars, even tourists taking pictures.  Quite simply, they are no longer too bothered by people.  It was all very strange and not the behaviour I had observed a few years earlier.  The deer seemed to enjoy the attention!  Of course, the tourists loved it, close-up pictures of wild deer on there Scottish holiday!

Well, I stayed at the hotel for a few days and quickly identified that these deer weren't as wild as they might seem.  On several occasions I noted at least a bucket of food waste being tipped on the ground immediately outside the hotel and in view of a webcam.  Yup, these wild deer were being brought to the hotel by the food and had unwittingly become an Internet tourist attraction :-).

So, in capturing this photograph I can't claim to have spent hours hidden in some earthy hide, enduring all sorts of hardships.  No, I grabbed a camera walked out the back of the hotel for 50 or so metres and had one pose on a small hillock looking West and into Glen Coe. :-)

Funny how things change.