Monday 8 October 2007

Fallow deer on Exmoor

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to a neighbour about local deer. It transpired that some people in the area thought that Fallow deer were not resident in the area. This upset me a little because I was certain I had Fallow tracks in the private woodland that I have access to. I started to chalk it up to experience as I'm not infallable when my nieghbour said he had seen them about 5 miles away.

To cut a long story short, I was with a client out in the woods recently and at one of our stops we saw, in the distance, 3 Fallow deer! They were about 350 yards away but we had great views of a male and two does. He had a lovely rack and they all looked very relaxed, having a lie down and chewing the cud. Unfortunately, they were on land that I don't have access to so I couldn't nip over there to track or stalk them. Never mind, eh. It was still very nice to get confirmation that they are in the area and that I was (probably) right about the tracks.

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4 comments:

Pablo said...

Nice result Jon. I still get confused between Roe and Fallow tracks.
Pablo.

Jon Simons said...

It is difficult mate - that's why I doubted myself at first!

There is a size difference with Roe being smaller than Fallow and there is also a bit of a difference in shape. The pad goes up to the tip of the cleave in Roe but not in Fallow.

Probably as clear as mud now.

J

Pablo said...

It might be clearer *in* mud! (ha ha)
Thanks for the tip, back to the books.
All the best
Pablo.

Anonymous said...

Great post, I am almost 100% in agreement with you