Culture Clash

With the fallow buck season well under way across the UK, Iain Watson tells how unnatural causes led to a fatal entanglement

For the stalker, August expands the species on offer across the UK, with the opening of red and sika stags in Northern Ireland, England and Wales and the beginning of the fallow buck season across the whole of the UK. With the exception of roe, antlers remain in the growing phase at this time of the year, though the opening of seasons offers the opportunity to target individuals marked as part of the cull so that a balance is maintained across all age classes.

Tangled fallow bucks

In common with other species, there has been an expansion in fallow numbers, but unlike roe and muntjac this has not necessarily translated into an improvement in the trophy quality of the species. Indeed, a wild trophy fallow buck is still the most difficult of the UK species to find. With a distribution that is biased towards central and southern England, fallow can often come into conflict with man, as well as falling foul of our activities in the countryside, as a recent incident from Oxford shire illustrates.

Herding species such as fallow live in single-sex groups for most of the year, apart from the period of the rut, with the overall size of the local population as well as its age structure influencing the group size, behaviours and associations.