THE LAW RELATING TO DEER AND GROUND GAME 
A deer stealer, in the commission of the offence, may be arrested without 
a warrant, and his gun or dog seized. If a deer which has wandered from 
a forest, or escaped from a park, should take up its abode in another 
man’s coverts, doing damage there, it may be killed by the owner of the 
covert, or his keeper or agent. From this it would follow that a farmer 
may kill an outlying deer doing damage to his crops. Yet we have a note 
of a prosecution of a farmer in Cheshire, at the Eddisbury Petty Sessions 
in April, 1895, for snaring an outlying deer from the park of Sir Philip 
Egerton, when, on the contention of the prosecutor that the animal was 
private property and was known to have escaped from the park, the 
magistrates convicted the defendant. How would the case stand if the 
farmer, instead of killing the deer on land in his own occupation, shot it 
on land belonging to the lord of the manor ? This question is answered 
by a decision of Lords Justices Ridley and Bigham in Threlkeld v. Smith, 
in a case stated by justices for the county of Westmorland in June, 1901.* 
The facts were as follows: The justices at petty sessions had convicted 
the defendant and fined him £5 and costs under section 14 of the Larceny 
Act for shooting and carrying away a deer that had strayed from the 
uninclosed common and forest of Martindale, belonging to Mr Hasell, 
to land belonging to Lord Lonsdale, in the adjoining manor of Bampton. 
They consented, however, to state a case for the opinion of the Divisional 
Court of King’s Bench as to whether he had been rightly convicted. It 
appeared that the defendant, a tenant of Lord Lonsdale, had shot the deer 
while it was standing in the River Lowther, and it was contended on his 
behalf before the justices that he ought not to be convicted for the following 
reasons: (1) That the deer, being wild and unreclaimed, was an animal 
ferce naturce which anyone might kill or capture. (2) That sections 12 
and 13 of the Larceny Act did not apply to the case, the animal, when killed, 
being neither in the inclosed or uninclosed part of the forest, chase or 
purlieu. (3) That Mr Hasell having no property in the deer at the place 
where it was killed, the defendant had committed no offence against either 
the common or statute law. The magistrates, however, convicted under 
section 14 of the Larceny Act, which enacts that: “ If any deer . . . shall 
be found in the possession of any person who, being taken before a justice 
of the peace, shall not satisfy him that he came lawfully by such deer ... he 
shall be liable to a fine.” Mr Justice Ridley, in giving judgment, expressed 
the opinion that “ if a man can show that the deer was killed outside 
Threlkeld v. Smith, 1901, 2 K.B. 531. 
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