The morning started in soft gold and sea mist, the kind of Scottish light that feels painted rather than real. We left Kintore and wound our way through Belhelvie toward Potterton – the sun spilling over the North Sea to our right, green glens and stone walls rolling out to our left. Sheep stood like sentinels in the dew, and the wind turbines along the horizon turned in slow rhythm, like great quiet clock hands marking the passage of the season.
By the time we reached the fields, the air smelled of salt and harvest. This was my turn – my chance at a roe buck – and I could feel the weight of it. The last hunt of the season. Kristian hadn’t mentioned that part until later, that I was the final hunter standing between him and a one-hundred percent success rate for the year. No pressure…
The stalk was slow, deliberate. The glen ahead opened into one of the most breathtaking scenes I’ve ever witnessed – a storybook valley to one side, the sea glowing orange to the other. When the moment came, it felt almost suspended in time. One shot, clean and true. My first Scottish deer.
They told me it was tradition to be blooded, and I’d been warned not to resist – that fighting only made for a bigger mess. They weren’t wrong. But as that ritual played out, the laughter, the sunrise, the quiet pride – it all felt ancient. Not barbaric, but bonded. Like I was part of something older and wilder than myself.
It was a fine buck – heavier and more defined than Ashton’s from the first morning. I found myself wishing he’d been the one to take it. Still, I carried it out myself, the weight across my shoulders grounding me in the moment. Somewhere between exhaustion and awe, something that, deep down I already knew, hit me… this wasn’t just about hunting. It was about belonging – to land, to lineage, to a fleeting moment that will never quite fade.
We packed up quietly, still grinning, still shaking our heads at the sunrise that didn’t seem real. The rest of the day was for the hills – Bennachie was calling us from a distance like it had been waiting the whole time. It was as if the land wanted one more test before we left Aberdeenshire behind – to trade the weight of the rifle for the pull of the climb, to see Scotland not through a scope, but from the summit.
