observer; records not so confirmed have been disregarded unless they were
supported by pictorial evidence.
Wild deer are generally shy and elusive creatures: frequently it is easier to
detect their tracks and droppings than to see the animals themselves. There are
great difficulties, however, in deciding from this indirect evidence which species
of deer is present. Many factors such as the sex, age, type of movement and
health of the animal affects its tracks and droppings. Amuntjac's tracks could
be confused with those of a young fallow deer fawn in summer; the cleaves of the
former's feet are not always asymmetrical as some books suggest (see Lawrence
& Brown, 1967). However, in late winter, the size of tracks should enable those
of fallow to be distinguished from those of muntjac. A particular muntjac deer
tends to deposit its droppings in the same place or places and so heaps of
droppings accumulate: such is not the case with the larger species of deer in
Britain. In assessing records based on deer droppings and tracks, therefore,
account has been taken of the habits of the various species. Most records of
fallow-type droppings and tracks have been accepted as evidence for the
presence of fallow rather than, for example, young red deer if fallow have been
seen in the neighbouring areas. In conclusion, a somewhat more liberal stan-
dard has been applied in accepting records of fallow than those of other species
of deer. This approach is probably justifed by the much larger number of sight
records of fallow deer, although it may mean that the Survey has under-
recorded the other species. Published records of deer dating from before the
Survey have all been accepted at face value.
The biggest danger in a survey of this kind is that the results will reflect the
distribution of observers rather than that of the species being studied. In
assessing old records it is frequently difficult to know whether the absence of a
record from a particular area truly reflects the absence of a species or just the
absence of an observer. Does Laver's book The Mammals, Reptiles and Fishes
of Essex truly reflect the distribution of these animals in Victorian times? In
order to overcome this problem, an attempt has been made to record the ab-
sence of deer from an area. However it can never be said that deer do not occur
in an area, only that no evidence of their presence was found. On one occasion,
a report was received of the presence of red deer in a young conifer plantation,
fenced against hares and rabbits, in north Essex. My wife and I spent about two
hours looking around the wood and the only evidence of deer found was one old
footprint on a patch of clay adjacent to a fence post. We concluded that a fallow
deer had been in the wood sometime in the past and that the red deer had been
misidentified. Suddenly, it started to rain and rather than walk through wet,
waist-high vegetation, we scaled the fence and walked along the edge of the
adjacent field where, to our surprise, we found tracks similar in size to those of a
red deer stag. After the rain shower, I returned and made a plaster cast of the
tracks. Rain again appeared imminent so I took a short-cut through the wood to
my car. I scaled the fence and had walked only 20 metres through the wood
when a red deer hind ran out of the rank vegetation in front of me. Had it not
rained, the presence of red deer would probably not have been confirmed, at
least on that occasion.
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