Bog water seeps higher up my legs, closer towards my knees. My boots are already sodden, heavy with mud. The base of Cores Mountain, in Killarney National Park, is deceptively wet despite the bright autumn sunshine. The green rolling landscape is rapidly yielding to yellow gold and orange.
I like to think that on a good day I can move as stealthily as a large cat. But I'm stumbling about, every step is creating a loud glugging sound. Only the most nimble creatures, deer, float here. More clown than wood sprite, my objective is to reach the small rise just ahead, take up a position behind those large rocks and wait. Only a few more metres, I smile at my cunning and my perfect lookout point, worth all the clambering across the bracken and the lumpy terrain, well worth the wet feet.
But whoosh, the ground seems to open up. Well, not so much open up as give way - I've just hit a particularly watery spot in the soft ooze and I'm now waist deep in cold water. My camera case is splattered, but luckily either instinct or surprise caused my left arm to shoot skywards. I'm holding my zoom lens aloft like Excalibur and can't stop laughing, glad I'm alone in realising how very wet and cold my bottom is. Well, if there were any stags or hinds about, watching my cartoon passage into the deer range between two mountains, Cores and Fertha, they'd have run off by now - unless of course they are still laughing at my subtle tracking.
Still, fortune must smile on the well-intentioned, however awkward, or perhaps deer do have a sense of humour. Just as I stumble to a graceless landing at my chosen spy spot and wipe a muddy hand on my fleece, wondering should I bother putting the wide-angle lens back on the camera, I scan across the range and see a set of antlers etched against the blue sky. The entire stag suddenly comes into view. His tawny, reddish body that had merged with the hillside and the fading bracken is now as clear as the day itself. How long has he been there? Long enough to have observed my comic stumbles; at least he must feel I'm no threat. Less than 30 metres away, he's looking at me with that particular intelligent curiosity deer seem to have; he appears to consider the situation the way a horse would.
He's a young stag, unlikely as yet to be one of the masters. He's not too blocky and his neck does not look as thick as that of many of the other stags at this time of the year. In spring, stags shed their antlers and immediately begin growing new ones.
With the beginning of the annual rut, the mating season, the red deer stags, their antlers now at their heaviest and most lethal, develop mighty manes and become aggressive fighting machines. Thickened, weightlifter-like necks are needed to support the antlers. Now the stags are majestic. Some weigh in at about 200kg, not quite pretty, and above all they are sexually aroused, vocal and dangerous. They even move differently, adopting a loping trot. The roars that ricochet across the mountain ranges and valleys are deliberate, full of intent and threateningly territorial. This most graceful and passive of animals, the red deer or fia rua, Ireland's largest wild herbivore, enjoys a special status conferred not merely by beauty, but by its historic place in Irish culture as the only truly native species of deer, although some scientists suggest it may have been introduced by Neolithic settlers. Still, the fallow deer only arrived in Ireland with the Normans, while the small Sika was brought here from Japan in the 19th century.
The handsome red deer stag looking at me seems calm, even serene, without a care in the world, apparently engaged by the view in general, not just me. Will the sound of the camera scare him? For the sake of a photograph will I lose the privilege of looking at him until he decides by choice to move off? As is so often the case with wildlife, memory wins out over the chance of a picture. Not for the first time, I wish I hadn't forgotten the chocolate and apples back in the car - along with my binoculars. Something makes me look away from him for a moment, to the right.
Possibly 20 metres away from me, in a spot I had not been aware of, a single hind grazes. But she is not alone. There's two, no four, with a fifth lying in the scraggy grass - and there's another three. Eight in all. Killarney National Park is one of the few remaining places in an increasingly suburbanised Ireland where it is possible still to glimpse some sense of an ancient wilderness. The Highland deer, as distinct from their larger, better nourished, lowland peers - many of whom are tagged and graze contentedly in enclosed parkland - remain truly wild animals.
Watching the rut evokes this sense of ancient primeval ritual at its most pure. Killarney's deer, the smaller Sika or fia Seapβnach (meaning Japanese) and the native red are vulnerable to poachers and crazed drivers who tear along the winding road that cuts through the park. There is also the hardship of winter. But at the moment all else recedes to the background as the elaborate business of sex and breeding takes over. Not that there is any sense of sexual activity taking place before me. The stag is surveying; the hinds are grazing. These prime females, graceful and unhurried, seem unaware of me, but are. I look back at the stag. He hasn't moved. I chance a picture. He sustains a perfect pose and does not move.
The hinds also oblige. They continue grazing and I sit still, thanking God more than luck. I'm so hungry I wish I could eat ferns like the deer do. Distant stag roars cut across the scene. Serious mating activity is continuing higher up the mountain. But one lazy master stag seems content to do his work sitting down, allowing his heavy bellows to announce him. Only his antlers are visible up along the skyline. Master stags have their own private herds of hinds, numbering from a couple up to 20. These groups are known as harems and this big fellow, lounging on the mountain top, has the ego of a sultan.
Whatever way the wind is blowing, loud voices shouting and singing begin to undermine the silence, and the lead hind, who has been discreetly on the alert throughout, looks up. She must have given a signal. They move off in an ordered file. The stag is still watching me. I look to the departing hinds and back to the stag. He's gone. Instead, a large, untidy group of humans appears from the west. Yelling and screaming like primates in a cage, the straggly procession inflicts an unbelievable racket as they tramp though the deer range inhabited by internationally protected animals. Later, I'm told they were boy scouts out to refine their scouting skills. Judging by the litter left behind, the scouting ethos, including respect for nature and wild animals, seems to have become distorted.
Hours before, past midnight, I had wandered about near Torc waterfall. A wonderful setting, but the sound of the water muffled the roars of the stags. Driving a mile or two further into the park, with the windows down, a diesel engine can sound very loud if you're listening for stags. I pulled over in a woodland clearing, turned off the engine and put on the headlights. Five hinds stared like statues into the lights. I felt guilty but kept looking at them. For 15 or 20 minutes they stared, mesmerised, paralysed by light; no wonder they get hit by cars. I turned off the lights and slid off in the darkness as a stag emerged in front of me. If he charged the car, I deserved it. But he stepped back into a dense wall of tree and shadow.
Pulling into another clearing, I see a trio of hinds and open the car door as quietly as possible, but they dart off like nervous ballerinas. Back towards Torc I abandon the car and walk into the woods. A collection of ghost stories force their way into my mind, but I find a stone facing into a wide open space and wait, recalling my earliest memories of deer from my childhood in California. The Killarney night may not be too cold, but it is dark and there are shapes and shadows. Roars blast through the blackness. They have a controlled urgency and menace. Low guttural grunts of intent issue from competing stags.
By early November, the rut is over. The stags are exhausted, have lost half their body weight. Some are wounded and may later die. The calves resulting from all this activity will be born by June. These great angry cries are statements rooted in generations of life and death. It is fascinating and it takes a while before I realise that the sensation creeping up on me is not excitement. It's fear. I run back to the car just as the bloated moon appears.
Everything looks different in the morning. Walking up the path from the waterfall towards the deer range, I keep an eye on Torc. Killarney's red deer population stands at about 700. The rut may be loud but it is also secretive. The Sika rut is less spectacular, the deer are smaller and don't roar, they whistle. Interestingly, fallow bucks fight far more viciously than red deer stags.
On the Torc side of the Old Kenmare Road, three hind were carefully keeping their distance from a group determined to pet them. Several hundred yards away, a lone figure kept binoculars trained on a patch of woodland. The man was observing a stag and four hinds. I saw a second stag. The hinds meandered, but the first stag was deliberate. The second stag paused briefly, but moved off.
The road means people, and people make noise. They also want instant deer, of which there are plenty nearer the Muckross estate and indeed within the Killarney demesne in the town itself. A large tagged herd graze happily in a field near the road leading to the town, visible to even the most mildly interested of motorists. But the mountain setting back in the park, near Mangerton, Torc and Cores as well as in Friar's Glen, with its traces of a medieval settlement, is true to nature as a dramatic theatre for this ancient species.
By watching alone, you see more. All you need is time and patience - and food. After the loud scouts had scattered the deer, I thought now was the time to run back a couple of miles to the car and collect the chocolate.
Instead, as I squelched towards the path I met two women both dressed as climbers. They were serious deer watchers; one is from Killarney and has spent years exploring the park. They also had food. Back I went into the hills with them. Within minutes we saw a stag. He in turn was watching two hinds. We followed him into the valley. A third hind appeared. The group moved off, followed by us. A ballet evolved. The stag made his intentions clear, the females in turn displayed interest and seemed to be teasing him.
We followed the party over bog, stone and stream. A couple of times, it seemed as if we'd lost them. But they kept reappearing. The stag disappeared behind a ridge, so did a female. Then they were back in view and there was a fourth hind. There were three of us, and we kept on, covering about six miles in pursuit.
As the party climbed, it seemed the show, for us, was over. But it wasn't. A second stag had appeared. The first continued herding his four females. The second stag stood like a sentry at the top of the pass leading to Mangerton. The group cut across the plain and climbed up the far ridge of Cores. Like pilgrims in a procession they walked on, slow and deliberate. At first only the stag's antlers were visible against the sky, then his entire silhouette was to be seen, as were those of the hinds. At a discreet distance, the second stag followed.
The late afternoon sunlight softened the yellow, golds and browns of the hillside, and as blue drained from the darkening sky the slow-moving, now dark shapes of the deer became smaller and finally disappeared.