G'day,
I went down the road to a nearby property to look for hares and foxes a week ago. As I parked the car, I noticed a large animal about 450 yards away across the paddock. As the paddock is full of round bales there are no cattle allowed in so the beast had to be a red deer, probably a stag by the headgear it had. [I had seen a pair of deer in the paddock three weeks prior while whistling foxes at night.] The deer was standing tall and looking towards my car on alert. The moment I opened the door and stepped out the deer took off like a rocket and quickly disappeared. Given there are drongos around spotlighting from vehicles I wonder if this deer has been 'educated' by said drongos stopping to take potshots? In the distant past there was a large herd of red deer that used to graze on this particular paddock at about 3:00 PM each afternoon in clear sight from the road. They didn't last long as the spotlight boys quickly shot them all.
Jim