You know that the UK’s deer are truly getting out of hand when they start disrupting picnics at country house operas in the Home Counties. I am a survivor of just such a cataclysm. This is my story.
The doe must have wandered out of the woods and into the grounds of the stately home to browse the formal planting during the first two acts of Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa. When the long supper interval arrived, human diners — me included — began flooding into the walled garden, blocking her escape route. She circled the lawn in rising panic and at increasing speed, taking flying leaps over hampers and picnic blankets. Sooner or later she was going to smash a champagne glass, break a leg or skittle an elderly stockbroker.
This surreal wildlife encounter made me curious to know whether the UK’s deer population is expanding and becoming more habituated to humans. There definitely seem to be more of these animals, particularly native roe deer and smaller introduced species such as muntjac. Acquaintances who live in London’s semi-rural commuter belt complain that deer raid their gardens by night, chomping lovingly nurtured plants.
This chimes with changes in behaviour I have observed. It has become much easier to see roe deer, elegant creatures around the height of a medium-sized dog. In many places, their extreme shyness is wearing off. You can watch them grazing on the edges of tree cover in full daylight. They scarper only if you get close.
“There is no question that the number of deer in this country has increased dramatically since the 1970s,” confirms Robert Frewen of the Country Land and Business Association. Back then, the UK deer population was estimated at under half a million. It is now around 2mn — “and marching towards 3mn”, says Frewen. This, he adds, reflects an increase in survival rates corresponding with warmer winters.
Lynx and wolves are long gone. Proposals to reintroduce them are controversial. For the moment, the onus is on Britons to control larger herbivores ourselves. Otherwise, they may eat all the vegetation available to them, further degrading fragile biodiversity. After this, a proportion of the deer would starve to death.
I do not like the idea of killing superfluous Bambis with high-velocity bullets. But the alternative may sometimes be crueller.
In the US — in popular folklore at least — all you need to shoot deer is a gun from Walmart and a truck with a hood you can strap a carcass across. In the UK, regulations on owning and using hunting rifles are thankfully strict. But this may mean there are now too few deer stalkers.
In Scotland, a government agency has already slapped a compulsory cull order on one estate overburdened with monarchs of the glen. I cannot see this happening in southern England unless deer numbers here rise far higher.
In the meanwhile, what are gardeners to do? Consider the stature of invaders first, says Leigh Hunt, principal horticultural adviser to the Royal Horticultural Society. High perimeter fences keep roe deer out of gardens, but they are costly. If diminutive muntjac and Chinese water deer are the problem, lower barriers will exclude them from areas where you grow vulnerable crops.
As for ornamentals: “Deer classically love roses,” Leigh says. “But a standard rose bush will typically be above the height a roe deer can reach.”
The RHS publishes a useful list of plants generally shunned by deer. Rough, hairy or pungent leaves may deter the animals. But individual deer have varying tastes. The best policy is to experiment and persist, Hunt says. “You may have to tolerate a certain amount of damage,” he adds.
The experience of some gardeners in the US, a country with a much higher deer-to-human ratio, is that fencing — rather than widely available deer repellent — is the only infallible way of preserving gardens from marauding white-tailed deer.
Even in remoter parts of the UK, deer may force you to admit that your “garden” is actually just a clearing in a wilderness. For years, my parents laid on deer buffets of everything from azaleas to zinnias in a patch behind a Highland cottage surrounded by Scots pines and rowan scrub. In the end, they gave up on this “garden” and enjoyed watching the deer instead.
I should conclude by finishing my story about the doe at the country house opera. It had tumbled over on the grass once already. Sooner or later it would injure itself.
Have you ever read one of those thrillers in which a crisis confronts a retired special forces operative? Years of drilling triggers an instinctive reaction. In an instant, they are slaying a terrorist with a library book or a tapestry frame.
My own training — as a middle manager in financial publishing — had not deserted me, either. It was second nature to step forward, waving my hands about and bellowing instructions as if I actually knew what everyone should do.
The crowd around the garden exit parted like the Red Sea and the deer made its escape.
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