THE RED DEER 
CERVUS ELAPHUS 
DISTRIBUTION AND EARLY HUNTING 
T O fully understand the red deer and its chase it is necessary to 
study the animal and its distribution in Europe from the earliest 
times until the present day. By nature, the red deer is a forest 
animal, inhabiting the greater part of Europe where there are 
large woods. It is found as far north as the Arctic Circle in 
Norway, and at no very distant date a few existed on the main- 
land opposite the Lofoden Islands. There are red deer in the dense forests 
to the south of St Petersburg, further south they occur near the Volga, 
but are now nearly extinct in the Crimea, from whence, about 100 years 
ago, many magnificent specimens were sent to Britain. 
Red deer are found in varying numbers in the British Islands, France, 
Spain, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Austria, and all its dependent 
states, Turkey, Montenegro, Albania, Asia Minor, Daghestan and the 
Northern Caucasus, Circassia, Sardinia and Corsica, Algeria and Tunis. 
Formerly they occurred, but are now extinct, in Greece, Italy, and Switzer- 
land. 
The stags of Persia and those of the forests between that country and 
the Caucasus, are sometimes relegated to a separate species known as 
the Maral; but the differences between that animal and the European 
red deer are so trifling that we need not discuss them. 
According to Owen, the oldest stratum in Great Britain that yields bones 
of red deer, is the Red Crag at Newbourne. From the early age represented 
by this stratum, through the late Pliocene and the succeeding epochs of the 
Pleistocene, the brick -earths, and the peat mosses until historic times, we 
have a continuous chain of evidence of the abundance of these noble 
animals in our islands. Remains of the very large type of red deer, called 
by Owen Strongyloceros, are comparatively rare. They were probably few 
in number, having wandered up through Western Europe from their 
birthplace, which may roughly be guessed as Persia or South-Eastern 
Europe. 
After the arrival of man in Britain, which we may approximately place 
as late in the Pliocene Age, red deer were very abundant. Their bones 
and horns are constantly found in railway and canal cuttings, and in 
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