144 British Deer and their Horns 
no introduction of new blood for seventy years. The deer are all of the dark spotted variety, 
with white throats in winter, and they carry long wide heads, though not very well palmated, 
but of them I shall speak later. 
To compare these deer with a good English one Mr. Charles Lucas of Warnham Court 
kindly allowed me to shoot a big seven-year-old buck in his park a little later in the same 
year. I accordingly weighed and measured him in the same way as the Drummond one, 
and should consider him a good representative English buck. 
Weight (clean) . .... g stone 
Length from nose to tip of tail . . .68 inches 
Height at withers . . . . -37 inches 
Girth behind shoulders . . . .41 inches 
There is no doubt that confinement is entirely foreign to the nature of all field creatures, 
and to deer in particular ; immediately range is curtailed you get deterioration principally 
in body, for heads can be fed up to a certain extent, even though sometimes their wild 
characteristics may be lost. Red deer turned out from a park into Highland woods improve 
enormously in body when the wild feeding is good, even without the addition of artificial 
winter feeding ; and in proportion fallow deer seem to improve still more, as has been 
proved by the Duke of Buccleuch’s introductions from his English park at Boughton 
(Northamptonshire) into his Dumfriesshire woods. Mr. Dan Cooper tells me that a fallow 
buck was killed by Lord Charles Scott in Drumlanrig that weighed about 24 stone as he 
fell, 18 stone clean. This was altogether such a remarkable weight that he kindly wrote 
to Chonler, the Duke’s head keeper at Dalkeith, to confirm it. The keeper wrote that he 
was confident the weights were correct, though he was not present at the weighing. 
Chonler himself writes to me that in Dalkeith Park he has killed a buck whose two-third 
weight was 176 lbs. ; adding to him one-third, we get 264 lbs., or 18 stone 12 lbs. as he 
fell. He also gives me some interesting particulars showing how bucks shot at three different 
times rise and fall in weight during August and September. 
As they fell. 
Clean. 
Dressed. 
f 
I92 
153 
127 
Killed in August. . . . -j 
J 95 
150 
125 
1 
192 
G 3 
l 3 l 
f 
200 
163 
131 
Killed beginning of September . . -J 
203 
163 
139 
l 
200 
160 
128 
f! 
182 
152 
128 
Killed end of September . . . \ 
\ 
171 
140 
118 
All weights in lbs. 
In the Earl of Southesk’s park, Kinnaird Castle, are also fine fallow deer, whilst in 
Ireland the best beasts are probably at Killarney and in Lord Cloncurry’s park at Hazlehatch, 
County Kildare. 
