Fallow Deer 
*55 
When changing their coats in the spring, fallow deer pull it out for themselves in 
mouthfuls, whilst I have noticed that red deer, both stags and hinds, get rid of much of the 
old hair by rolling and wallowing in their mud holes. For this reason a low-lying park is 
often more cut up in the spring than in the autumn. 
It is unnecessary to say anything here about catching fallow deer, as copious directions 
are given in many books, and there are two firms which make a profession of it. I was, 
however, assisting at a big catch in Denne Park this spring (1896), which had been organised 
by Mr. Marsh, and I learnt something I had not seen before, and that was how to carry a 
living deer without hurt to itself or its captor. After a deer had been disentangled from the 
net into which it had rushed, Mr. Marsh would get some one to give the beast a hoist as he 
himself drew it up by the hind legs over his own shoulders. One would scarcely imagine 
it would be so, but the buck, which a second or two before was all fight, now lay over the 
man’s back without offering a struggle or attempting to use his horns. It takes a big 
powerful man such as Mr. Marsh to thus carry a living buck (as I have drawn it from 
nature) any distance, and then it is as well to have some one to accompany the bearer and 
steady the head, not that the beast will use it, but simply because it wobbles helplessly from 
side to side and might trip the man up. But to all intents and purposes the buck is as 
helpless as a log. The deer-catcher told me to try it with a doe, as I am no Hercules, so I 
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