Fallow Deer

The European fallow deer is a deer native to Eurasia, historically from Turkey and possibly parts of Italy and the Balkans, and has since been reintroduced to its prehistoric range by humans and introduced elsewhere. It prefers mixed woodland and open grassland. Only bucks carry antlers, which become broad and shovel-shaped from the age of three. Coats vary from chestnut with white mottles to menil, melanistic and nearly white leucistic forms. It eats mostly grass in spring and summer and switches to acorns and other mast in autumn. Outside the rut it stays in groups of up to 150, and it can run at 50 km/h over short distances.

About the fallow deer

The fallow deer is a medium-sized deer of the family Cervidae, native to Turkey and possibly parts of southern Europe, and now introduced across Europe and to other continents. It is one of two living fallow deer species, alongside the rarer Persian fallow deer, and only its males carry broad, palm-shaped antlers.

Its scientific name is Dama dama, and it is also called the European or common fallow deer. Some taxonomists treat the Persian fallow deer as a subspecies of it, while others count the two as separate species. A male is a buck, a female is a doe and a youngster is a fawn. The North American white-tailed deer was once placed in the same genus, as Dama virginiana, before being moved to a genus of its own in the 19th century.

The two sexes look quite different. Bucks stand 85–95 cm (33–37 in) at the shoulder, while does stand 75–85 cm (30–33 in). The heaviest bucks can reach 190 cm (75 in) in length and 150 kg (330 lb). The front legs are shorter than the hind legs, so the back rises slightly toward the rump, and adult males have a prominent Adam's apple.

The antlers are the giveaway. Only bucks grow them, and from about three years of age they become broad and shovel-shaped, a form called palmate. In a buck's first two years each antler is just a single spike. Grown antlers reach 50–70 cm (20–28 in), are shed each spring and regrow by late summer.

Four coat colors

Few deer vary as much in color. The common coat is chestnut with white spots in summer and turns darker and plain in winter; a black-edged pale patch frames the tail. The menil form keeps clearer spots all year and lacks the black edging. Melanistic animals are dark grey-brown to nearly black with no spots, and leucistic deer are cream as fawns and pure white as adults, with dark eyes and nose. White fallow deer are not albinos. Most herds are mainly the common type, and white animals are the rarest.

Behavior and diet

Fallow deer are mostly active at night and are especially busy around dawn and dusk, which makes them a crepuscular species. Outside the breeding season the sexes tend to live apart, but for much of the year deer try to stay together in groups that can number up to 150. Adult bucks are often alone or in small bachelor groups. Females, fawns and yearlings form larger groups of about 7 to 14.

When alarmed, a fallow deer stands rigid with its head held high. It can sprint at about 50 km/h (30 mph) for short distances, though it is less muscular and slower than the roe deer. It can also jump up to 1.75 m (5 ft 9 in) high and 5 m (16 ft) long. When it bounds away, all four feet leave the ground at once and the tail is held up.

The species has six types of call. Does give an explosive bark as an alarm, fawns peep to contact their mothers, and rutting bucks produce a deep, low-frequency groan.

What fallow deer eat

The diet is flexible and changes with the seasons. One study in England's New Forest found the deer grazed mainly on grass from spring through summer, switched to acorns and other mast in autumn, and in winter added brambles, heather, holly, ivy and conifer material. They also browse herbs, dwarf shrubs, buds, shoots and bark.

The rut and fawns

The breeding season, or rut, lasts about 135 days, peaking in the second half of October in the Northern Hemisphere and in April south of the equator. Bucks often gather on small mating territories called leks, scrape the ground, thrash bushes with their antlers and groan. Defending a rutting stand is costly: bucks stop eating and lose an average of 17% of their body weight. Fights follow a ritual of antler shoving, and serious injuries are rare.

Pregnancy lasts up to 245 days, and a doe normally has a single fawn; twins are rare. Newborns weigh about 3–4 kg (6.5–9 lb). The mother hides her fawn in dense cover and returns to nurse it about every four hours. After three to four weeks the pair rejoin the herd, weaning is complete at around seven months, and the young are independent at about a year. Does can first conceive at about 16 months, but most bucks do not breed until about four years old.

Range and habitat

The only population known to be definitely wild and native lives in the Düzlerçami Game Reserve in southern Turkey, where numbers are very small. Populations in Italy, the Balkans and on Rhodes may also be native, but the evidence is too fragmentary to be sure. During the last ice age the species survived in refuges in Anatolia and probably the Balkans, and Roman-era trade later carried Turkish deer across Europe. The Romans brought fallow deer to southern England in the first century AD.

Today the species is widespread across Europe and has been introduced to more than 20 other countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Canada, South Africa and the United States. In the U.S. there are herds on a Georgia barrier island, on Texas game ranches, at Point Reyes in California and in the Land Between the Lakes area of Kentucky and Tennessee. Outside its native range it can be a pest: British Columbia lists it as invasive, and Washington State declared it deleterious exotic wildlife in 1992.

The preferred habitat is old, deciduous broad-leaf woodland broken up by grassy clearings. The deer also live in mixed forest, open woodland, scrub, savanna, grassland and low mountains, in climates from cool and wet to warm and dry. They can turn up on farmland and in suburbs. Predators include wolves, cougars and bears where they share a range, along with human hunters.

Conservation status

The fallow deer is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List, in an assessment by Masseti and Mertzanidou published in 2008. The rating reflects how common the species is across its possible native areas and throughout the European countries where it was introduced long ago.

The picture is far worse in its definite homeland. In Turkey, the spread of farming, the clearing of lowland forest and hunting had wiped out the herds of the Marmara and Aegean regions by the turn of the 20th century. A breeding program at Düzlerçami that began in 1966 grew the herd from 7 to 500 animals, but the herd then collapsed for reasons not fully understood, numbering fewer than 30 by 2007 and under 130 by 2010. That remnant still faces inbreeding and poaching.

The genetically distinct herd on Rhodes, about 400–500 animals, is also of major concern because of poaching, wildfire and possible interbreeding with escaped mainland deer, although it showed signs of recovery by 2008. The closely related Persian fallow deer is far rarer, and its wild population is the subject of reintroduction efforts in northern Israel.