“October, 1845.—The two old stags are wandering about, and seldom in the Forest.”
“October 4.—Hunted the stag near Park End; ran four hours, but lost him, night coming on.”
“September 20th, 1846.—The stag that was about
Staunton and Newland was killed this day, after a run of three hours. He was found on the old hills near Newland, and killed in Coleford. This was a four years old deer, calved in the Forest; the hind and calf went to Staunton, and never returned: the hind was killed by poachers. The venison of the stag was excellent: the haunches were 45 lbs. each.”
“October, 1847.—Another stag was killed after a good run. Two were found, and ran some time together before the hounds in Park Hill.”
“October 6, 1848.—The last stag returned to the Forest, after having been in the woods, &c., near Chepstow almost a year. He was found in Oaken Hill, and killed, after a run of three hours, in Sallow Vallets. His haunches weighed 51 lbs., and the whole weight 307 lbs.”
“The fallow deer of the Forest were reduced in number after the year 1850 by killing a large number of does. They were all fine animals, and when the enclosures protected them they got very fat, and the venison of fine flavour. They were generally hunted.”
At the time of Lord Duncan’s Committee in 1849 a general feeling prevailed against the deer, on the ground of their demoralising influence as an inducement to poaching, and all were ordered to be destroyed, there being at that time perhaps 150 bucks and 300 does.
The remarks “Going after the deer,” or “You don’t, may be, want to buy some meat?” are no doubt fresh in the recollection of many. Going about with guns, in numbers too formidable for the keepers to interfere, shooting the deer by day, and carrying them off at night, were by no means uncommon. Poachers of a poorer and more primitive stamp are said to have resorted to the expedient of dropping a heavy iron bar from where they had secreted themselves, on the projecting branch of an oak, so that it might fall across the neck of the deer which had come to browse beneath. Or they baited a large hook with an apple, and suspended it at a proper height by a stout cord over a path
which the deer were observed to frequent. They also were known to set a number of nooses of iron wire in a row, skilfully fastened to a rope secured to a couple of trees, into which, aided by dogs, they drove the deer. With such kind of sport at command, we may be well assured of the truth of Mr. Nicholson’s statement before Lord Duncan’s Committee—“if once men begin to poach, we can never reckon upon their working afterwards.” Ornamental to a forest as deer undoubtedly are, and disappointing as it may be to the stranger to find none in the Forest of Dean, we cannot regret that, in 1855, Mr. Machen records, “there is not now a deer left in the Forest, and only a few stragglers in the Highmeadow Woods.”‘