i6z British Deer and their Horns
Castle, Perthshire, which are certainly the best fallow bucks, both in body and H B B
land The horns « these bucks present a type winch is quite their own, and unlike any
other British fallow deer with which I am acquainted. T hey are very long averaging 26 to
27 inches, and though not broad in the palm, have generally a beautiful wild spread, which
gives them great dignity. The horns themselves, t s B a r e of that beautiful rough
dark quality which we all like to see. T h e span o f one, hanging H armoury at Drummond
Castle is truly wonderful, 37 inches, and I very much doubt i f it could be exceeded by
any British fallow deer’s head. I give a picture of it with its measurements, as well as some
fine heads from the same place in my own collection. The head in the centre o f the photograph
is 31 inches in lengfK, but it is not particulari|tpS*Mn other respects. I t is the
longest buck’s head I know of, being the same as the big English park head at Colebrooke.
Very few landowners in Ireland keep fallow deer, but there is no doubt that the country
is very suitable to fine growth, as wc see exemplified in the red deer and roe heads. The
best now are those kept by Lord Cloncurry at Hazlehatch, County Kildare. T ill quite
recently a certain number were kept by the late Sir Vidfcr Brooke at Colebrooke, but there
are none there now. The measurements o f the two best, which are o f very fine span, are
Length Span (extreme;1 Beam Palm Point
28£ 35 4 6 19
28 26 4 5 I81
Killed 26th August 1873. Seven years old ;
as he fell, 237-^ lbs.; 198 lbs. clean.
. Killed 19th August 1871. Seven years old ;
as he fell, 224 lbs.
and I give a sketch o f one o f them (p. 165).
There are many parks o f course in England, particularly in the south, where fallow
bucks carry fine heads, and probably the two where they are uniformly best are Petworth,
Lord Leconfield’s big park in Sussex, and Ashton Park in Lancashire, the property o f Mr.
Williamson, M.P. Mr. Bishop o f Lancaster Gate has two first-class heads from this park,
and Mr. Whitaker gave a picture in the F ield for 27th April 1895 o f a fine head from the
same place. On the last occasion on which I visited the Petworth herd, in August 1896,. in
a group of about a hundred adult bucks I saw eight or nine with grand heads, none o f which
•could have been much less than 28 inches in length, and 7 to 8 inches in breadth across the
palms, exclusive o f course o f any points. One day I obtained from Sam Redman, an old
whip o f the Petworth hounds, a head which he and the keepers said was the best killed
during the last twenty years. It is certainly a perfect and typical example o f what a fallow
1 A very curious fact about this buck was that his hardly mature five-year-old dropped horns were superior in every way to
those on his head at the time of death, when he was in his prime.