DEER QUESTION

Southland Times, Issue 25305, 7 June 1935, Page 3

DEER QUESTION

PROBLEMS. NOT NEW TROUBLES IN ELEVENTH CENTURY The various problems affecting the acclimatization of deer frequently cause newspaper correspondence to-day. That these problems are by no means new was made clear by Mr N. J. Dolamore when replying to a toast at the deerstalkers’ dinner last evening. “I have been delving back into ancient history on this deer question and I find that few, if any, of our pre-sent-day troubles are new,” said Mr Dolamore. “For instance, the deerstalker’s practice of taking sitting shots at foresters was quite as common then as now, save that then the shots were taken literally with a long, bow and arrow, whereas now a pen and the correspondence column of a newspaper is the usual medium. “There is also nothing new in the conflict of opinion between the Acclimatization Society, deerstalking people and the foresters and the Farmers Union as to how matters relating to deer, forests and farming should be correlated. The first reference I can find to deer in forest law was about ■ the year 1020 when the great King Canute in a Charter for a fotest in Essex placed very severe restriction on the number of sheep which might be grazed, as excessive stocking with sheep restricted the deer browse. H6\vever, as a result of the Domesday Survey about 1084, the Norman laws were even more severe and expressly forbade the grazing of sheep. “Although Mr Polson was not on the job then the Farmers’ Union protested, but their protests were of no avail, and the Acclimatization Society, comprising the King, nobles and heads of the Church easily won the day. In most cases the deer were in forest areas enclosed by fences, but these were low enough to enable them to jump out, and no adjacent farmer was permitted to erect a fence sufficiently high to keep them out of his crops. Trouble With Farmers. “There was indeed trouble with the farmers who became poachers and the whole laws were extensively revised 720 years ago when Magna Charta was signed by King John on June 19, 1215. Amongst other* things the sixth article of the Charter of the Forests dealt with the old custom of lawing dogs. This consisted of cutting off the three claws of the fore feet with a sharp instrument. There was a very severe penalty provided for the owners of uniawed dogs. One effect of this was to make the Farmers’ Union still more dissatisfied, and they set about devising methods of catching the deer without the use of dogs and these developed to a remarkable state of efficiency. One much favoured method was to use nets and snares on the most travelled deer tracks and this appears to have been extraordinarily successful. Probably the principal means of poaching deer, however, right throughout the period, when they were really plentiful in England, was by shooting with bows and arrows. This became so serious that in 1493 a General Act was passed forbidding the possession of cross-bows, except under the Kings license unless the owner was a nobleman, church dignitary or possessed a certain area of land, and in 1514, a still more severe statute was passed. “It appears that a cross-bow was at

this time considered a much more dangerous weapon in the hands of a comparatively inexperienced man than a long-bow which required a very high degree of skill for really accurate' marksmanship. Right throughout these several hundred years, the poor unfortune forester had a very hard row to hoe. He was expected to keep a strict account of all the deer in his forest and their natural increase. He had also to account for those that, were killed legitimately by the Acclimatization Society’s deer-hunting crowd whose principal methods seems to have been to run them down by the use of large packs of dogs, some times numbering thirty or forty. He also had to account for those that had died of murrain (disease) and most difficult of all, for those that were poached or stolen. The keeping of these accounts appears from available records to have been a most difficult matter. If an unduly large number of deer were poached, the forester got it ‘in. the neck,’ very often literally. If on the other hand, the poachers could not get what they considered a fair share, he usually got it somewhere else in the shape of an arrow from a bow, and if he escaped these people, the good old Audit Department probably caught him in the end.

“The penalties fdr trespass of vert and venison, as timber trespass and poaching of deer were known in those days, were very severe, but they appear to have depended very largely unon the social status of the offender. Thus I find that some nuns who killed deer (presumably by proxy) were hailed before the Court, but were forgiven for the good of the King’s soul. Sundry priests and abbots when before the Courts were at times rescued from the foresters by their spiritual superiors under threat (to the foresters) of excommunication or other dire penalties which the church had in its power to inflict in those days. Poorer men were dealt with more harshly according to the heinousness of the offence or the inclination of the justice. Penalties varying from fines of a few pence up to hanging in chains in the forest or towards the end of the 17th and early 18th century to transportation were common.”