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calendar   Tuesday - October 26, 2010

Oh Deer

British Knickers In A Twist

Over One Dead Deer




Largest stag in England has died. A hunter shot him. Weighing in at a whacking great 300 pounds, about the size of a regular mule deer, the red deer named The Emperor of Exmoor is no more. The deer was at least 12 years old, and red deer live perhaps 13 years in the wild. Regardless, anti-hunters are all riled up, and everyone is saddened that what could have been the largest wild animal in the UK is no more.

image

[earlier this month] Thought to be the largest wild animal in the British Isles, he weighs around 300lb and stands 9ft tall from the ground to top of his antlers. Photographed on his traditional stamping ground near the Devon and Somerset border, his precise location is kept a closely guarded secret for fear that poachers may try to stalk him. The mating season lasts until the end of this month, giving the Emperor plenty of time to prove he’s still the UK’s alpha male.
...
Local wild deer expert Peter Donnelly said after a sighting of the Emperor last year: ‘Red deer stags are the biggest indigenous land animal left in these islands, so it is possible that this is the largest wild animal in the country today.

‘The deer on Exmoor are larger than the ones in Scotland because of their diet, and this is a very fine beast. He’s so big and powerful.’

The shooting of a red deer named The Emperor has raised the issue of stalking - the tracking and shooting of the animals.

The Emperor, nearly 9ft (2.75m) tall, was thought to have been the biggest wild land animal in the UK - though some experts have questioned this. Stalkers see their activities as an important part of land management - a key method of regulating the number of deer in the wild. Government figures show about 350,000 deer are already culled each year in the UK, but numbers are still rising.

For professional stalkers like Mr Freedman, concerns about the shooting of Emperor were unjustified.
He said: “It’s a stag. It’s been shot. That’s how it happens. I’ve shot three deer this morning. It’s something we do every day.”

The rutting season in England lasts until the end of October. Odds are good that he’d done his fall business already. But the bucks will fight to keep their harems, and like our elk, sometimes it’s a fight to the death. And folks drive in from all over to run about the parks to watch the rut, oblivious to the possible danger. Hey, it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.

These moors are also home to Devon’s largest land mammal, the red deer. Autumn is the best time to see red deer, and October is the time to catch the rut, or mating season, when the animals are often active during daytime.  This is the period in which red deer society loses its normal calm and enters a state of unrest. Dominant stags spend their time guarding groups of hinds (females), bellowing out warning to potential rivals and occasionally coming to blows with them.

Nature lovers are mourning the death of a red stag dubbed the Emperor of Exmoor — a nine-foot (2.75 meter) giant reported to be the biggest wild animal in the British Isles. He was found dead soon after his picture appeared in the national press.

His size set him apart from the herd, but also made him prize prey for hunters willing to pay handsomely for such a majestic trophy.

“With a set of antlers such as this deer had, it was basically going to kill him in the end,” said Richard Austin, the photographer whose images of the stag appeared in newspapers earlier this month — inevitably accompanied by the word “majestic.”

“He was his own worst enemy, I suppose, Austin told the BBC Tuesday. “Growing that big and that huge and that magnificent, he was a definite target.”

A former royal hunting ground, Exmoor is popular with local hunters and with wealthy outsiders, who jet in to stalk red deer — Britain’s biggest land animal. They pay landowners for the right to hunt on their land and take away sets of antlers as trophies — or for a higher fee the whole head. If done during the hunting season, which runs from August through April, it is perfectly legal.

Hunting is a divisive issue in Britain, where the traditional practice of chasing down animals with packs of hounds was outlawed in 2004 — though with enough loopholes that hunting carries on pretty much unimpeded across the country. Supporters say it is a vital part of the rural economy, but hunting is bitterly opposed by some animal lovers.

The witness who saw the stag’s body said they recognised it as being the Exmoor Emperor as it was being taken away. Peter Donnelly, an Exmoor-based deer management expert, said it was a disgrace the animal, which is believed to have been 10 to 12 years old, had been shot during the mating season.

“It could be that he didn’t get a chance to rut properly this year, therefore his genes have not been passed on this time round,” he said.

And that’s the big story in the UK today. One deer, hunted. Oh, the humanity of it all. But please, hold your tears, all hope is not lost:

Mr Donnelly said he had seen a very large young stag in the past few days - which could well be the offspring of Emperor from an earlier rutting season.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 10/26/2010 at 11:07 AM   
Filed Under: • AnimalsGuns and Gun ControlUK •  
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