The price to pay for deer
Some people long to catch the merest glimpse of them, some travel many miles to see them – while others are bent on culling them severely.
Deer provoke many different emotions. I’ve even heard of folk buying lion dung from safari parks to try and deter deer from eating their roses! Yet they are perhaps now more numerous than ever before.
Nevertheless, to those who dwell within our now extremely urbanised towns and cities, seeing deer still represents something of a thrill. Indeed, the hope and perhaps expectation of many of today’s burgeoning numbers of tourists to wild Scotland is to see, in particular, herds of red deer roaming across fine Highland landscapes.
Despite that craving, there are those who are currently calling for the restoration to these isles of the likes of lynx and wolf as a means of controlling the ever-growing populations of deer. There are also conservationists, eager to protect our woodland areas, who also wish to see deer numbers seriously reduced. Some say that the effect of over grazing by deer is seriously reducing cover for ground-nesting birds and that the hunting of deer for venison should therefore be encouraged.
Deer, then, create something of a dilemma in different folks’ minds. They are seen in both good and bad lights, depending on your point of view. Some conservationists want them to be protected as important members of our native fauna, others want higher culling levels and many foresters side with those who espouse more severe control.
The erection of deer-proof fences to protect young trees from browsing deer is said to represent a dangerous obstacle to our dwindling population of capercaillie. However, we are told that those responsible for the management of deer are failing to keep numbers under control to such a degree that many deer themselves – especially our red deer – are suffering from malnutrition, due to excessive competition for diminishing food sources.
Red deer, those Monarchs of the Glen, are our largest land mammals. In most people’s minds, these days they are regarded as animals of the wild Highlands and uplands in England such as Exmoor. Yet, in truth and by origin, they are really forest animals. However, in recent centuries the rapid advance of industry and the demands of successive wars stripped our landscape almost bare of its natural tree cover. Thus our red deer found their natural habitat shrinking so quickly that they had to adapt to a harsher lifestyle, forced to seek the hills and the wilder glens and moors of the newly treeless landscape.
But times change and there is now plenty of evidence to suggest that many red deer are finding their way back into the new Lowland forests.
Meanwhile, as natural woodland was rapidly disappearing, Why not send us your snaps and have your image appear as our Reader’s Pic of the Day?
You can e-mail photographs to news@stirling observer.co.uk or pop into our office at 34 Upper landowners, some of whom had been enriched by the exploitation of such resources, strove to develop their fine, manicured parklands and embellish them with herds of virtually tame deer. While in some respects we might regard these parkland herds perhaps as not truly wild, more as a decoration to please the eye, I’m sure they did also provide good eating when required. But, by and large, these deer were and still are cosseted, living a comfortable life and, when facing inclement weather, provided with supplementary feeding.
The herds of red deer in places such as London’s Richmond Park are a prime example of “not very wild” red deer, albeit that when the rut comes along, the stags quickly rediscover plenty of deep-seated, wild passion!
The disappearance of so much of the woodland cover of Britain came quite close to causing the extinction of that other truly native species, the smaller and very woodlandorientated roe deer, which had been unable to adapt to the changing conditions. Indeed, the creation of the Forestry Commission in 1919 probably rescued the graceful roe from such a fate by planting extensive coniferous forest which turned out to be excellent habitat for them. The recovery of the roe has been nothing short of remarkable and these days it so commonplace in certain areas it has become the “urban deer”! Locations such as cemeteries have been eagerly colonised by fast expanding communities of roe – in some cases surprisingly close to city centres.
Many centuries ago reindeer A Mandarin duck was snapped by Dave MacDonald of Callander taking an early morning swim on the River Teith. Craigs, Stirling, FK8 2DW.
You can also log on to our website at www.stirling observer.co.uk and send your picture using the“send your pics”link. were also apparently native to these shores. Certainly there are traditions in both Scotland and England which tell us of reindeer hunts. And, since just after the Second World War, reindeer have been restored as Scottish animals, although they are not free-ranging and may perhaps therefore be regarded as domestic animals, as indeed they are across many parts of northern Europe.
It also seems that a long way back in our history giant fallow deer were once native here. However, the fallow deer now resident in various parts of Britain, and most notably here in Scotland in such remarkably diverse locations as Loch Lomondside, Perthshire and the Isle of Mull, probably owe their presence firstly to the Romans and, later, to those mad keen hunters, the Normans, who imported fallow. In addition, early in the 17th century, James I and VI imported darker coloured fallow from the continent.
Like those parkland red deer, many of our fallow deer herds might perhaps be regarded as embellishments to estate lands rather than as truly wild inhabitants.
Hence, there are several variations on a spotted theme among the fallow deer to be found in Britain these days. Some are almost white, others tan and yet others are a distinctly chestnut colour. Fallow bucks are also notable for their palmate antlers, – as distinct perhaps as the more familiar adornments boasted by red deer. Not surprisingly, fallow are nowhere near as hardy as red deer and often require extra feed in winter. It might be argued that fallow deer have been
Please make sure that when your are sending your images you include your name, address and contact details and a little piece of information about your picture. with us for long enough for them now to be classified as native animals like, for instance, the rabbit.
In modern times, the dubious fashion for the importation to the British landscape of what might be regarded as exotic species of animals has resulted in the presence in these islands of other types of deer. For instance, here in Scotland there are sika deer, the origins of which are Far Eastern – from China and Japan.
These animals, quite similar too but smaller than our red deer, are to be found in Argyll where, because of their close genetic relationship, they are able to interbreed with red deer, thus diluting the purity of our native red deer.
If grey squirrels and American mink are rather better known animal importations, which in their own particular ways have had a distinctly deleterious impact on our landscape, in southern Britain two other imported deer are making something of an impact too. Chinese water deer and, in particular, the tiny muntjac, originally native to China and India, are now well established down south, with the muntjac recently noted to be widening its territorial ambitions with moves across the Border into southern Scotland.
However, it is the fast growing populations of our truly native deer, the red and the roe, that are of the greatest concern. Venison, a meat that contains relatively little fat, is perhaps more regularly finding its way on to the shelves of our supermarkets now, yet we still export most of it, even in this healthconscious age!