AT FIRST, I can’t see what Andrew is pointing at. He is clearly excited, but all I can see is a huge, domed bramble bush … and then, among the wiry branches, I begin to make out the shape of antlers. They are brilliantly disguised, and the stag beneath them is standing perfectly still, as if caught in a game of hide and seek.
We are on foot and surprisingly close to the beast, and as we creep around to get a better view we find ourselves in the unblinking gaze of a red deer stag; the original monarch of the glen. From hoof to antler tip he must be two metres tall. And there he stands, between us and his harem of hinds, quietly grazing behind him.
It’s the middle of September, about a month before the rut when red deer stags can get a little frisky - even so it is with care that I put the camera to my eye. Click. The first shot gets the deer in focus, but its head is slightly obscured. Click, click. The next two take in-focus shots of the brambles in front of him. Autofocus is the curse of the modern photographer. Switch it off.
As we turn our backs and walk away from the herd, a flurry of white rabbit tails criss-crosses the field in front of us like a sudden snowstorm. I’d guess there are 80 of them, and among them and behind the rounded clumps of brambles there are more deer too - females this time who raise their heads to stare at us inquisitively.
None of these animals, not even the rabbits, seem especially troubled by we two humans. The same had been true 20 minutes earlier when we rounded a corner and walked into a herd of longhorn cattle; massive beasts, significantly larger than dairy cows. They simply ignored us and carried on browsing peacefully; huge animals in a largely unthreatening environment.
That’s the beauty of the Knepp Estate south of Horsham in West Sussex - it’s not quite as wild as the Serengeti, but it’s heading that way. And without apex predators like lions and tigers, the deer, longhorns, Exmoor ponies and Tamworth pigs that roam across 3,500 acres have little to fear. They get to eat what they want, when they want and where they want, and they are rarely herded.
(The animals are, however, culled when necessary. Were they not, they would multiply until there was too little food on the estate for them to survive the winter, and so free-range beef, venison and pork are byproducts of the re-wilding programme at Knepp, and - in this way - the owners of the estate stand in for the predators.)
I had wanted to visit Knepp since listening to Isabella Tree’s Wilding as an audiobook the year before. In it, she explains in detail how her husband inherited the estate from his grandparents when he was 21, and how they struggled to run the farm commercially along modern, agro-industrial lines. They failed, mostly because the soil - 350 metres of Wealden clay bottomed out with ironstone - wasn’t good enough. And so they decided to give the land back to nature.
It wasn’t the usual form of human-managed conservation, in which particular species are protected; it was a real ‘hands-off and let nature take its course’ approach. The introduction of herbivores to browse the creeping thistle, sallow and scrub only made it more natural: before humans discovered farming (and were themselves domesticated by wheat), European bison, boars and wild horses would have browsed, fertilised and continually ‘reset’ the land.
This modern experiment in re-wilding began in 2001, and 18 years have been long enough for there to have been significant changes in the landscape and the wildlife attracted to it. To put it in simple terms: the pigs grub up and fertilise the soil, which is then attractive to wild flowers, which pull in the insects, which in turn attract birds.
As a result, this is one of the very few places in England where nightingales and turtle doves are on the increase. And it is hardly surprising that Knepp was chosen for the reintroduction of the white stork to the British Isles, with 24 juveniles recently released there. We saw half a dozen of them in a field, and they took off massively as we approached.
The impact of the re-wilding is clearly audible as we get out of our car in the campers’ car park. I’ve taken part in formal bird counts at Chartwell, Mariners Hill, Toys Hill, Scords Hill and Knole (all in Kent) in the past couple of years and there have been many dead spots in the woodlands in which no birds sing or call. At Knepp (and out of season in September), the birds call and chatter loudly all day long, just like they did in my childhood. It is enchanting.
Pitching our tent in a clearing made in the thistle was … interesting. It had rained that morning, and there was a wide variety of native slugs on the site, with little black beetles crawling among them. Once the tent was up, we found we were very quickly sharing it with a rather beautiful orb spider, a harvestman and several beetles. Knepp is pesticide free, and if you’re camping you have to be prepared to share your space.
You also have to like the sound of owls, which can make quite a racket throughout the night. The loud “hooo hu-hu huwoooo” of the tawny owls is occasionally punctuated by the shrill, bubbly shriek of a barn owl. In fact, all four native owls - including the short-eared and the long-eared - are here, alongside the introduced but nevertheless super-cute little owl, which finds the dung of the longhorns absolutely full of beetles, which it loves.
There are 16 miles of publicly accessible footpaths on the Knepp estate as well as a dedicated walkers’ car park (£2 in the honesty box, if you please), and as you stroll along them you get to see how the animals are shaping the landscape: there is grassland selected and worked by the grazing animals, the woodland pasture the prey animals can melt into, the mud holes they can wallow in and the fields of creeping thistle and ragwort that pull in the purple emperor butterflies and cinnabar moths. There is also a huge lake with large flocks of Canada geese, mute swans, cormorants, great crested grebes and mallard.
The brambles, by the way, are left to grow into the large shrubs they want to become because - apart from providing fruit for the birds and animals - they provide excellent cover for tree saplings away from the long tongues of the deer and the cattle.
You can literally go on safari on the Knepp Estate (they use the same kind of trucks used on African safaris), but be aware they get booked up quickly. You can also go glamping in yurts and shepherd’s huts, or - like Andrew and I - you can pitch a tent and wake up to a misty dawn chorus.
Meanwhile, you can get a closer look at the landscape in this beautiful little video here or you can click through the gallery below.
I went back with a friend a week or two later and managed to catch up with the Exmoor ponies. It was closer to the rut, and the red deer stags were bellowing - it is a curiously lion-like roar - and younger stags were already locking antlers. As I was getting into my car ready to leave after an 11.5 mile walk, I noticed a longhorn cow driving her calves across the access road to new pasture. She chose to drive them back again as I was leaving. She stopped in the middle of the access road, lowing to her calves, which were still in the field. Traffic stopped, which was the longhorn’s intention. The calves - like human children - were reluctant to follow, so mum stood in the road. Then she turned to face my ancient Land Rover. I knew what she wanted. She wanted me out of the way so that she could lead her calves back to the path they had come along, which was 100 metres behind me. So, we got into this odd situation where this massive longhorn was walking towards the front of my old Landie, and I was reversing - understanding what it was that she wanted: access to a favoured path. In the car park, people began to take an interest in what must have appeared to be a Land Rover backing down to a longhorn cow. Fair enough, folks. Me, I was just being sensitive to her needs. Just one thing though: if you want to avoid herds of people among the wild animals, go during the week. Saturday was crowded.
