J is for Jura, in Scotland.

It all started with a phone call, as it so often does, “Can you go to Jura and photograph a deer stalker?” said the picture editor. And off I went. Up the A82, away to the ferry, across to Islay, drive across Islay and down to the wee ferry that takes you to Jura. Getting assignments to the Scottish islands was always great, as much fun as being told you were being sent abroad.

I had to do a portrait of Davey Mack, estate keeper and deer stalker on one of the biggest privately owned estates on Jura. It was an easy enough assignment, time was short as I had to be back on the ferry hours later, in order to get home within the terms of a one-day assignment. I photographed Davey at his target practice range- a wooden stag full of bullet holes, and then up onto the hills by all-terrain vehicle for a quick picture. I asked him if I could come out shooting some time, him on his rifle, me on my cameras, and was told sure, call during the hunting season.

Which is what I did about three weeks later on the first day of the season, and a week or two later I was up there again. “Gone shootin’” said the sign on my door, away to get my photographs of stag hunting.

The days would begin well enough, with a huge fried breakfast, the whole works, as laid on by my hosts Davey and his wife. And then it was all downhill. Well actually, technically, it was all uphill, but that’s where the trouble began.  The Paps of Jura as they are known are three mountains standing between 730 metre and 780 metres high on the southern half of the island, and it was up there somehwere that we had to go. And for a city boy like me, more used to driving the M8, it looked like a challenge.

It’s one thing to hike up a mountain using paths, stopping for a can of Irn-Bru, a wee sit down. Quite another when you’re accompanying, and having to keep up with, a fell runner who runs these peaks for fun. There was no stopping, no wee rests, no sticking to the path. It was right, here we are, there’s the peak, straight up.  No zig zagging, just straight up. A yomp to Goose Green would have been easier.

In my wisdom I’d dispensed with the idea of taking all my gear, my heavy Canon’s, a lovely 70-200mm for that close up of a stag’s eye. In my wisdom I’d thought bugger that, I’ll travel light, for the pictures I lose there’ll be others I gain. I’ll be creative, he who travels light travels fast – my motto to this day when going on assignments. Take as little as possible, sure you miss some pics, but you will undoubtedly gain others by being mobile. So I took two Leicas, an M4-P, and an M6, lenses were I think 35mm, and 50mm. And a pocket full of HP5.

So straight up. And a tip, don’t stand on the really vibrant green tufts of grass, beacuse there are the most wet, so I found out as my foot got submerged in the peat bog of hell, soaked. And we’d barely started. But after that it was all fine. I lie. It was all brutal. Away, way, up we went, after a while we changed tactic, still straight up, relentlessly, but occasionally we’d stop, take out our ‘glasses’ ( small telescope) and scan the hills for stags whose days, or perhaps even minutes, were numbered. I’d been warned that this wasn’t a dramatic culling with thousands of dead animals, I was warned that we’d only kill one beast, and even then if we didn’t find one to kill it wasn’t a bad day. They were killed for health reasons, for being lame, for being ill, to preserve the health of the entire stock. So we’d stop if Davey thought he’d spied one on the opposite mountain, or crag, we’d skirt round hills, hugging the grass, trying not to spook anyone. I was spooked, trying to cross large expanses of broken rock falls, a big descent to my right, trying not to smash the Leicas into the rocks, removing my hat to expose my ears and give me a better sense of balance.

A piece of grass would be picked and let to drop by Davey, by watching it he’d know which way the wind or breeze was blowin’, and of course we’d always be upwind, up-breeze, of the beast. So more crawlin’, more runnin’ over the fells, round the back, over the top, to end up down wind of the beast.

We’d get close to some ailing stag, and then it’s be all super stealth mode. Crawling on my stomach – which  by this time was empty and thought my throat had been cut, crawling, inching forward, over wet grass, until we’re behind a rock, or a large clump of weed. Out would come the eyeglass, a study of the beast. And then, out would come the rifle. And in would go a bullet, one of only three Davey carried.

It was always a clean hit, the beast felled with one bullet to the heart. As as the beast lay panting it’s last, Davey would be running across to it, me still laying on the grass also panting what felt like my last. Once it was dead, it would be gutted, and the guts buried to stop the birds eating it. And now, sitting beside the carcass of the Monarch of the Glen we’d radio for Jimmy. Jimmy was the man in the all terrain vehicle, he’d be on his way up, the vehicle trundling over the bogs. He’d come to collect the dead stag and take it down the mountain. It wasn’t quite as pictureque as I hoped, it wasn’t as iconic, as old looking, as beautiful, as man against beast through the elements, as Glyn Satterley’s stag hunting photographs. No pulling it home, no white pony to shoot. But what could I do, this is where I was.

Seeing Jimmy coming up the mountain was also great for another reason. He’d bring lunch. Some sandwiches, a flask of tea. Or as Davey put it on the radio one day, “Jimmy, come on up, we’ve got one. Bring the tea and sandwiches”, quick glance to me, laying on the grass, trying to catch my breath, “and some oxygen for the boy”.

It was on one of these lunches we sat near the summit of one the Paps, the slope falling away below us, the other Paps standing close. The air was clean, fresh, there was silence apart from the noise of the stags rutting in the glen below, the noise carrying on the wind. Sitting there eating cheese sandwiches and drinking tea you’d think you’d gone to Scottish Heaven. It was beautiful.

After lunch we’d go down the mountain, and into the shed, to behead and clean the carcass. The day’s work nearly done.

–

Months later I was back to Jura again, this time to take photographs of Scottish artist Julie Brook, a woman sponsored by Jura Distillery ( if I remember correctly) who was living in a sort of cave, in a little bothy she’d made. This bothy was way out on the north west coast of Jura, and from there she’d work painting huge canvasses inspired by the land and sea, or building rock scultpures. The Independent Sunday Review Magazine assigned me to go shoot a feature on her, and back to Jura I went, back to Davey. To get to Julie Brook we had two options he said, we can go by boat round the north, or we can go across the top. I prayed, and Davey probably did also, that the first option would work, but the weather was against us. We had to go over the top. And it was just as brutal as I remembered from the first time.

It was just before this return visit when I got a surprise phone call from Davey’s wife. She had a request. A secret request, a favour she needed doing in the big city. “It’ll be Davey’s birthday soon”, she said, and “he’s always wanted a budgie. Can you buy me a budgie and a cage and bring it up with you?”. So there I was, driving all the way to Jura, across on the ferries, with a budgie in a cage stuck in the footwell behind the driver’s seat. Chirp chirp chirp, and the wee bell ringing a ding a linging, all the way to Jura.