Why dawn — and why the wind decides everything

Deer are crepuscular, which is a polite way of saying they do their living in the half-light. The first hour after sunrise and the last before dusk are when they feed, move between covers and do most of their social business — and it is when they are least prepared to tolerate us. At dawn you also have the woods to yourself. Dog walkers are still in bed, the car park is empty, and the only sound is a blackbird winding up and the distant yaffle of a green woodpecker.

The single thing that will ruin your morning faster than noisy boots is scent. A deer's nose is its survival kit; it will smell you long before it sees you. As a rule of thumb, the wind is your master. Move so that the breeze is on your face and your route takes you downwind of the area you expect deer to be in, never upwind of it. On still, damp mornings scent pools and drifts in unpredictable ways, so pause often, wet a finger and hold it up, or watch which way smoke, midges or falling leaves travel.

Read the wood before you step into it

Ancient woodland — the kind that has been continuously wooded since at least 1600 — has a particular feel to it: multi-stemmed coppiced hazel, old stools with moss on them, and a ground flora that tells you it has never been ploughed. If you can find dog's mercury, wood anemone, bluebell, wild garlic or a wild service tree, you are standing in something genuinely old and worth treading lightly in.

Look for deer sign as you go. Slots in soft mud, longer than they are wide; fraying stakes where a buck has rubbed the velvet off new antlers in spring; and a browse line — a neat shelf of chewed shoots at roughly deer height along hedge bottoms and woodland edges. Field margins and hedgerows are the deer's motorway network: they use them as covered routes between woodland blocks, pasture and heath. A quiet corner where a hedge meets a wood, or where two hedges meet a gateway, is one of the best places to simply stand still and watch.

Fieldcraft: how to walk, stop and stand

Approach as though the wood is listening. Arrive thirty to forty minutes before sunrise, be in position before the light comes up, and let your eyes adjust rather than reaching for a torch.

• Wear soft, dark, non-rustling clothing. Leave the waterproof trousers that swish, and tape over zips and buckles that jingle.
• Boots with quiet soles. On a frosty morning a snapped twig carries two hundred metres.
• Move in short bursts: ten to fifteen paces, then stop for thirty to sixty seconds. Most deer detect movement, not shapes.
• Use cover properly — walk with a trunk, hedge or bracken bank between you and the open ground, and always take the inside line on bends.
• Never cross open ground in full view. Go round, even if it takes ten minutes longer.
• Binoculars of 8x42 will serve you better than a huge pair you cannot hold steady in cold hands.

Through the year: what to look for

Roe deer are the woodland specialists, and the roe rut runs late July into August, when bucks chase does in tight circles through the bracken. Red deer, more often associated with open moorland and heath, rut in September and October — the bellow carrying across a valley at first light is one of the great sounds of the British countryside. Fallow are most visible in October on the woods and parkland fringes of the south.

Late spring brings the hidden season. Does and hinds leave their fawns tucked in long grass and return to feed nearby, so a lone fawn is not abandoned — walk on and leave it alone. Winter is the honest season: leaves down, deer grouped in fields and rides, and the best time of year for a beginner to actually see one.

Deer, heathland and the conservation balance

Lowland heath is one of our rarest habitats, and deer are part of its story. Grazing animals — cattle, sheep, ponies — are what keep heath from scrubbing over with birch and pine, and deer browsing plays a similar role at low density. Push the numbers too high, though, and the same browsing strips out the shrub layer that nightjars, woodlarks and Dartford warblers need to nest, and thins the young growth that lets ancient woodland regenerate. Over-grazed heath and over-browsed coppice are both signs of an imbalance, and that is why many heathland sites and woods are monitored and, where necessary, managed.

You can help simply by staying on rights of way and permissive paths rather than pushing into the interior. Ground-nesting birds and hidden fawns do not need the surprise of a walker in April or May, and a heath that is quietly observed stays a heath that is quietly healthy.

Distance, patience and the walk home

Give deer at least fifty metres, more if you have a dog — and keep dogs on a lead wherever you are asked to, full stop. If a deer stops feeding, lifts its head and stares, you have been noticed; stop, hold still, or back away slowly. If it stamps, snorts or runs, you have pushed too far.

Then comes the best bit. Sit down at the edge of the wood with your back against a trunk, let the sun come up over the heath, and wait. Most mornings you will see nothing larger than a grey squirrel. Every so often, the wood gives you a roe doe stepping silently out of the bracken twenty metres away, and you will understand exactly why the early alarm was worth it.