The Essex Naturalist
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• The deer do not live entirely within the forest, hut use it instead to lie up
in during the day, and move to adjoining fields to feed at dusk. It is this
diurnal movement, and the freedom to perform it, which is the crux of deer
distribution in the Forest.
• Fallow no longer reside in the southern part of the forest as urbanisation
prevents any potential access to fields in the south.
• Visitor pressure interferes with this diurnal deer movement by acting as a
barrier to the deer's passage, rather than being just a disturbance. Similar
barriers include major roads, canals, motorways and railways.
• The fallow deer have an annual behavioural cycle which influences their
distribution patterns.
One way to test part of the behavioural hypothesis is to identify barriers to
diurnal movement from an OS map, then it should be possible to predict the
presence of deer.
Before assessing the evidence to support or refute these two contrasting
hypotheses, it is useful to consider the history of the deer in the forest (see
Appendix). The history of the black fallow deer in Epping Forest is a
noteworthy one - tied up with royal hunting, poaching, ancient wood/pasture
cultivation and notorious disreputable figures such as Dick Turpin. With this
background it is easy to succumb to the glamour of history and to accept the
historical hypothesis as apt. In this research we attempted to distinguish the
historical and behavioural views and to draw out the consequences for deer and
forest management.
Results
Information concerning the deer of Epping Forest is scant and often conflicting.
In particular, no recent Corporation of London deer count exists for the main
forest, only the Lower Forest north of Epping and the bufferlands north of the
Robin Hood roundabout. Our data is therefore divided into primary, secondary
and tertiary evidence. Primary evidence is novel data gathered by the author
MJD (Dunn, 1997) and secondary evidence is the novel compilation of previous
work done in the area. Tertiary data is information already gathered e.g. by the
Corporation of London. All primary evidence was gathered during fieldwork
conducted between April and August, 1997. The study area covered all of
Epping Forest north of the Robin Hood roundabout and the adjoining
bufferland estates, excluding Galleyhill Wood and Epping Long Green.
Primary Evidence
Nitrogen Analysis
Samples were taken of grass and other ground flora from sites where evidence of
deer use was medium to heavy. These samples were tested for average nitrogen
content. This was to ascertain whether grazing quality was better in the