The Deer Browse Up To The
Very Skirts Of The Farmhouse Below, Sometimes Even Enter The Rick-Yard,
And Once Now And Then, If A Gate Be Left Open, Walk In And Eat The Pease
In The Garden.
The bucks are still a little wilder, a little more nervous
for their liberty, but there is no difficulty in stalking them to within
forty or fifty yards.
They have either lost their original delicacy of
scent, or else do not respond to it, as the approach of a man does not
alarm them, else it would be necessary to study the wind; but you may get
thus near them without any thought of the breeze - no nearer; then,
bounding twice or thrice, lifting himself each time as high as the fern,
the buck turns half towards you to see whether his retreat should or
should not be continued.
The fawns have come out from the beeches, because there is more grass on
the slope and in the hollow, where trees are few. Under the trees in the
forest proper there is little food for them. Deer, indeed, seem fonder of
half-open places than of the wood itself. Thickets, with fern at the foot
and spaces of sward between, are their favourite haunts. Heavily timbered
land and impenetrable underwood are not so much resorted to. The deer
here like to get away from the retreats which shelter them, to wander in
the half-open grounds on that part of the park free to them, or, if
possible, if they see a chance, out into the fields. Once now and then a
buck escapes, and is found eight or ten miles away. If the pale were
removed how quickly the deer would leave the close forest which in
imagination is so associated with them! It is not their ideal. They would
rather wander over the hills and along the river valleys. The forest is,
indeed, and always would be their cover, and its shadows their defence;
but for enjoyment they would of choice seek the sweet herbage, which does
not flourish where the roots of trees and underwood absorb all the
richness of the soil. The farther the trees are apart the better the
forest pleases them. Those great instinctive migrations of wild animals
which take place annually in America are not possible in England. The
deer here cannot escape - solitary individuals getting free of course, now
and then; they cannot move in a body, and it is not easy to know whether
any such desire remains among them. So far as I am aware, there is no
mention of such migrations in the most ancient times; but the omission
proves nothing, for before the Normans, before the game laws and parks
together came into existence, no one who could write thought enough of
the deer to notice their motions. The monks were engaged in chronicling
the inroads of the pagans, or writing chronologies of the Roman Empire.
On analogical grounds it would seem quite possible that in their original
state the English deer did move from part to part of the country with the
seasons. Almost all the birds, the only really free things in this
country now, move, even those that do not quit the island; and why not
the deer in the old time when all the woods were open to them? England is
not a large country, but there are considerable differences in the
climate and the time at which vegetation appears, quite sufficient of
themselves to induce animals to move from place to place. We have no
narrowing buffalo zone to lament, for our buffalo zone disappeared long
ago. These parks and woods are islets of the olden time, dotted here and
there in the midst of the most modern agricultural scenery. These deer
and their ancestors have been confined within the pale for hundreds of
years, and though in a sense free, they are in no sense wild. But the old
power remains still. See the buck as he starts away, and jumps at every
leap as high as the fern. He would give the hounds a long chase yet.
The fern is fully four feet tall, hiding a boy entirely, and only showing
a man's head. The deer do not go through it unless startled; they prefer
to follow a track already made, one of their own trails. It is their
natural cover, and when the buckhounds meet near London the buck often
takes refuge in one or other of the fern-grown commons of which there are
many on the southern side. But fern is inimical to grass, and, while it
gives them cover, occupies the place of much more pleasant herbage. As
their range is limited, though they have here a forest of some extent as
well as the park to roam over, they cannot always obtain enough in
winter. In frost, when the grass will not grow, or when snow is on the
ground, that which they can find is supplemented with hay. They are, in
fact, foddered exactly the same as cattle. In some of the smaller parks
they are driven into inclosures and fed altogether. This is not the case
here. Perhaps it was through the foggers, as the labourers are called who
fodder cattle and carry out the hay in the morning and evening, that deer
poachers of old discovered that they could approach the deer by carrying
a bundle of sweet-smelling hay, which overcame the scent of the body and
baffled the buck's keen nostrils till the thief was within shot. The
foggers, being about so very early in the morning, - they are out at the
dawn, - have found out a good many game secrets in their time. If the deer
were outside the forest at any hour it was sure to be when the dew was on
the grass, and thus they noticed that with the hay truss on their heads
they could walk up quite close occasionally.
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