Why we’ll gun down BAMBI
Yes, they look heart-meltingly cute. But behind the doe eyes, muntjac deer are a breeding and garden-destroying machine — who face being shot on sight
THEY look every inch the cute, doe-eyed Bambi you would love to see grazing at the foot of your garden. But think again. Such is the devastation that these beasts have inflicted in England that they are wanted dead or alive in Scotland — preferably dead.
Such panic surrounds muntjac deer — a miniature breed native to China — that when it was thought two were spotted in Dumfriesshire in 2012, staff from Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) used night-vision binoculars and remote-operated cameras to try to hunt them down.
Stan Whitaker, SNH’s non-native species expert, said: ‘When muntjac eventually do arrive in Scotland, our policy is to attempt to eradicate them before they can establish a breeding population.
‘The preferred method is shooting by trained deer managers.’
The big brown eyes and glossy black noses of these dainty little creatures — barely the size of a whippet — will touch even the hardest heart.
But the fact is that muntjac deer, brought from China to Woburn Park in Bedfordshire in the early 20th century and spreading since, are voracious thugs which destroy everything in their path. To them, a well-stocked garden is the equivalent of a Michelin-starred restaurant.
And numbers have soared over the past few years, pushing the UK population to more than 150,000.
Not only that, they are utterly brazen. Unlike other deer, which take flight at the slightest distraction, they march across immaculately mowed lawns and sip from birdbaths as if they own them.
Their confidence is startling. Just ask Norma Chapman. In her one-acre garden in Mildenhall, Suffolk, they squeeze through gaps in the hedge, loiter around outside the house like teenagers and set off her security lights morning and night. They also bark for hours. ‘Often 200 times in succession,’ says Norma.
Norma makes no effort to keep them out. ‘There’s no point — they’d come through the hedge, or under the gate,’ she says.
What makes things worse is that their powers of mass destruction are compounded by their remarkable fertility — as well as their ability to swim, climb and dig.
Unlike other deer, which breed once a year, female muntjacs normally have three offspring every two years and are pregnant solidly for most of their 15-year lives. And they have no natural predators.
Of the six species making up Britain’s expanding two million-strong deer population, only red and roe deer are native. The other four — the fallow, sika, Chinese water deer and muntjac (the smallest of the six species) — are all interlopers.
BUT muntjac seem to impinge on us the most. They were imported in the early 1900s, courtesy of the then Duke of Bedford, to grace his estate behind 10ft-high walled enclosures at Woburn Abbey.
But these deer can squeeze through 4in square mesh. They are cunning and resourceful; one poorly fastened gate and they were out.
At the time, no one thought much of it. They were easily hidden in woodland and hedgerows and, for a long time, remained largely out of sight. But like all British deer, they multiplied — and multiplied.
However, muntjac suffered a setback in 1963, the coldest winter for more than 200 years, when most froze or starved to death, reducing the numbers to fewer than 2,000.
It was against this background that the first Deer Act became law — banning the shooting of them by shotgun — only rifles were allowed to be used to kill them, except in very limited circumstances for crop protection.
Inevitably, population numbers quickly rose. They were helped, too, by the notorious Beeching cuts — the scrapping of thousands of miles of railways in the Sixties — which gave the deer easy routes along which to travel unhindered.
Curiously, muntjacs are rare in Scotland, where gamekeepers and landowners do everything in their powers — using sensors, alarms and look-out teams to round them up, drive them out, shoot them — to stop muntjacs from establishing themselves north of the Border.
But down south they are causing havoc, and not just in gardens — woodlands are taking an even more worrying battering.
According to Peter Watson of The Deer Initiative (which works on sustainable management of wild deer in England and Wales), muntjacs — indeed, all deer — are causing untold damage.
‘They are munching through dwindling native habitat and eat anything and everything they can get to — brambles, ivy, ferns,’ he says. ‘The only thing they don’t do is strip the bark. You can tell if muntjacs are there the minute you walk into a wood. There’s no ivy or brambles up to their 2ft “browse” line, the height they graze up to. If roe are present, the browse line will be closer to 5ft. Fallow and red deer, which measure a metre to the shoulder, can reach foliage up to 7ft.’
They all crunch through our wild flora — primroses, oxlips, orchids and bluebells.
‘Britain has a large percentage of the world’s bluebells, but they just Hoover through them,’ says Mr Watson. ‘They eat the flowers and leaves and dig up the bulbs. They’re driving conservationists mad.’
Equally alarming is the damage they’re doing to already beleaguered ash trees that are at risk of being wiped out by the pervasive ash dieback disease, which is caused by the fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus.
‘Where an ash manages to put down saplings, the deer come along and chew them off,’ says Mr Watson. ‘So the trees don’t have a chance.’
Another victim of this fastspreading wild animal is the beautiful nightingale, whose numbers are declining partly because the deer destroy thickets close to the ground where the birds nest.
It is no coincidence that muntjac numbers first boomed in the early 1990s when there was a sudden drop in nightingale numbers.
As well as eating everything in their reach, these unloved Bambis cause myriad other problems.
Muntjacs can live at high densities in small spaces and, increasingly, one of their preferred habitats are road and motorway verges — which has led to more traffic accidents. Deer cause between 50,000 and 70,000 road accidents each year in England and Wales — and a third are caused by muntjacs.
At least ten people are killed each year in deer-related accidents and 700 injured.
However, in many cases, insurers won’t pay up if a driver’s car is damaged because under the small print of policies, they are not covered, since the deer are owned by no one and are no one’s responsibility.
Many people believe the Government should follow the lead of other European countries, which have policies designed to control deer numbers, and order culls.
While those doe eyes mean animal-lovers recoil in horror, it seems the only solution.
Norma Chapman certainly thinks so. ‘It must be done — things are out of control,’ she says.
According to Peter Watson, to wrest back any sort of control, we’d need to shoot about 30 per cent — at least 50,000 muntjac. All very well in theory (and if there was the will in Westminster), but in practice, given these dog-sized destroyers roam all over the place and few politicians seem interested, there is no sign of anything being done.
‘Shooting takes time and we don’t shoot enough,’ says Mr Watson.
Even under the current law, the task is cumbersome. To kill a muntjac, you need a rifle (no shotguns, remember), plus a licence — and it must be killed on your own land.
More than 40,000 people now have a deer-stalking certificate, but that still leaves an awful lot of deer.
In the meantime, most of us are forced to stand and watch as they devour our dahlias.
So what can we do?
FIRST, ignore all old wives’ tales about the best way to keep muntjacs from your marigolds. It’s no use trying to scare them off with human hair hanging in muslin bags, or by using some artfully placed lion dung or rags soaked in disinfectant.
Nor does it work trying to discourage them with prickly or pungent-tasting plants. They are near-indestructible. Indeed, they happily eat yew trees — having developed a resistance to the trees’ killer poisons (a twig of which would kill a human if eaten).
Alternatives, such as recordings of dogs barking, ultrasonic devices and an ingenious activated sprinkler called a Sprayway, have varying levels of success.
According to deer experts, the only guaranteed answer is a 10fthigh tensile steel deer fence; anything lower won’t work as muntjacs can jump at least 6ft from a standing start.
But before we all hoist the white flag and allow our country to be colonised by teeny barking deer with appetites of lions and the breeding power of rabbits, there is one very important fact that must not be overlooked.
Muntjac meat is delicious — sweet and tender, like young spring lamb — but with low amounts of fat and cholesterol and with high levels of iron, which is essential for a healthy diet.