"AND what is that white stuff we can see in the Highlands? Looks like snow."

The weather forecaster was right. It was snow.

What a change from the mild weather - and even the look of the day - we have been experiencing in our part of the country. It was almost dark by half past three in the afternoon.

We are in Scotland, with friends, to help with the deer cull on a friend's estate. Not me personally. Guns frighten me to death. But John and his friend were to assist with the very necessary task of taking out the weak and elderly deer that might well starve during the winter.

To reduce deer numbers on the estate to manageable proportions for the forage available. To protect thousands of recently-planted trees from having their bark stripped off by the same hungry deer. And to indulge in head-thumping, whisky-driven anecdotal analyses of the day each night.

On our first day, Nick, the estate owner, had arranged for a driven pheasant shoot. To take up our positions, John and I had to clamber up through woods to hide our presence from the birds. We came upon a small stream running through the woods.

Through the water, plump brown trout were determinedly wriggling upstream. Each weighing about a pound. "Fat as butter," John said.

We knew that about 12 years ago. Nick had blasted out a rock fall in a stream that was blocking any fish swimming upstream to lay their eggs. For the first time since that event, Nick had caught three sea trout above the blasted rock fall, and these little relatives, must be using the same stream to make a trip back to their spawning grounds.

The stream was very narrow at the point where we were, close to its source, and John could block the stream with his hands and cup a fish out of the water to have a closer look. The fish's backs were actually breaking the surface of the water to get upstream.

"They'll be full of eggs," John said, "not good eating." He put all the fish caught back into the stream, and they wriggled off determinedly on their way.

Yesterday, John and his friend were taken off five miles inland - to hills where the contours on the map are so close together that they almost form a thick black line.

They came back exhausted. Successful. Wet from where the snow had melted on them. Cold. Exhilarated. Not only from the stalking, but also because they have found a rich source of sheep's horns for their stick-making.

I may not have been able to convey over the last year or so the extent of the obsession that has taken over John's, and his friends', lives since they started stick-making. We drive past any woodland at a snail's pace because he is looking for suitable sticks. No walk is undertaken without the most dangerous-looking of knives.

Knobbly burrs dominate conversations. It is a very sad affair. If John is not looking for the

actual sticks, he is then seeking out material for the handles. I cannot tell you how cross I get to find yet another blob of araldite or superglue on the kitchen table where John has left pieces of glued-together horn to drip whilst they bond. It rather reminds me of that film Jurassic Park where the scientist could extract DNA from insects stuck in blobs of amber resin. In the future, scientists will be able to extract remnants of lunch from the glue blobs left on my table.

So the reason for all the excitement? They had just come across a flock of 300 black-faced tups to service a flock of 9,000 ewes. That is 300 sets of curled horns. And the shepherd has kept the horns from any dead tups.

Apparently, we are in for a very heavy whisky session tonight as the shepherd has been invited along for dinner.

"We're in negotiations," John said. Sounds like another bad headache to me.

Updated: 12:17 Thursday, December 06, 2001