BDS THE FIRST FORTY YEARS 1963-2003 Four decades of work for the welfare of deer A Personal View and Memoir by Founder Member Peter Carne CHAPTERS 1. Why a British Deer Society? 2. The Deer Group 3. Birth of the BDS 4. Early days 5. Forging ahead 6. Onward and upward 7. Further Branch development 8. The Journal 9. Moving on 10. Spreading the load 11. Into the ‘70s 12. Celebrating a birthday 13. After the party 14. Growing pains 15. Going professional 16. Royal Patronage 17. Business as usual 18. So far so good 19. Into the 1980’s 20. Twenty years on 21. Ufton Nervet 22. Child-Beale 23. Happier times 24. The early 1990s 25. Our Fourth decade 26. Thirty years on 27. A new era 28. Changing times 29. A Company limited by Guarantee 30. 2000 not out! 31. All change! 32. Anniversary count down 33. Epilogue Appendix: Illustrations The British Deer Society accepts no responsibility for interpretations of fact or expressions of opinion in the accompanying text, which are entirely those of the author. Peter Carne has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as Author of this work. 2 1. Why a British Deer Society? THE FIRST HALF of the twentieth century was a dark age for British deer, in England especially. Two world wars and their aftermath saw the closure of very many ancient deer parks. Some were converted to farmland for wartime and post war food production. Others were requisitioned as sites for military camps or for other defence purposes. Yet others fell into neglect, with no staff to keep walls and fences in good repair. In some cases all the deer were shot. In many others some deer survived by escaping into neighbouring open countryside, where they found refuge in woodland and established wild populations where none had previously existed. These wild deer caused damage to farm and forest crops, and there were calls for their destruction. There being no established tradition, in lowland Britain as a whole, of controlling wild Deer numbers by methods recognised as humane, recourse was had to snare and shotgun. Lingering deaths from strangulation and horrendous suffering by Deer shot but not killed outright and never recovered were all too frequently the result. To complicate matters further, there were no legal close times or close seasons when Deer might not be killed to avoid orphaning dependent young or for other good reasons, in which respect Britain was almost unique among other European countries. People who knew how these things were managed so much better in mainland Europe, and a few concerned and articulate Britons, made known their deep dissatisfaction about the situation here, but for many years theirs were voices which seemed to be crying in the wilderness. The first hopeful signs that a better future might prove possible were a re awakened interest in mammals as subjects worthy of closer attention by British naturalists and others during the early post war period. In the absence of a suitable national organisation to serve their specific interests, deer minded people linked up with others mainly by chance, or not at all. To quote an example from the personal experience of the writer, and which was to have far reaching repercussions entirely unforeseen at the time, in one of its issues in 1950 the magazine Country Life published a letter by a certain Gerald Johnstone appealing for information on deer distribution in these islands for the purposes of a survey he was conducting. Having been interested in this aspect of deer since my teenage years or earlier, I wrote to Gerald Johnstone and gave him such details as I had garnered. Quite unexpectedly, he invited me to partner him on his study, undertaken purely as a hobby, mainly by writing to masters of foxhounds and others likely to know what deer occurred in particular areas, I agreed to do so without hesitation. Another of Johnstone’s correspondents was a Norfolk schoolmaster, F.J. (Jim) Taylor Page, who taught biology at Norwich Grammar School and was hoping Johnstone could help him with a study of his own, the significance, if any, of the presence of the fungus ergot as a determinant for the location of roe deer rutting rings. Having no knowledge whatsoever of this esoteric subject, Johnstone passed on Jim’s letter to me. I knew nothing about it either, but did my best to divert 3 Jim’s interest to the subject of deer distribution. I had only limited success, but thus began an exchange of letters upon deer matters of all descriptions, which continued throughout Jim’s lifetime. 4 2. The Deer Group FOUNDED in 1953 as a small corresponding group of individuals with wide ranging interests in deer, under the Messianic influence of its secretary, Jim Taylor Page, The Deer Group grew in membership from an initial dozen or so to around 120 ten years later. It was hoped at the beginning that the 12th Duke of Bedford might be persuaded to serve as President. He declined to do so, however, on the grounds that as owner of one of Britain’s largest park herds of deer, at Woburn in Bedfordshire, he might be deemed to have too much of a vested interest in these animals. Naturalist author R.S.R. (Richard) Fitter and other influential people played a prominent part, however, in publicising the Group and promoting its interests. With the foundation in 1954 of The Mammal Society of Great Britain, it was seen to make sense for the tiny deer Group to merge with the new and larger organisation as a semi autonomous entity, and this was done. As paid up members of The Mammal Society, Deer Group members participated fully in the benefits of that membership as well as in those of The Deer Group, which included from the start a regular newsletter from their Secretary, typed in his inimitable style and duplicated for distribution. All the latest news from the deer front thereby reached members with little delay. Deer literature was then sparse and public awareness of deer and their place in the natural scheme of things correspondingly slight in the 1950s. There was an obvious need, therefore, for a pocket handbook on deer in Britain. Determined to fill this gap in the market, Jim Taylor Page gathered about himself a team of eight contributors with varying degrees of expertise on different aspects of their subject. Agreement to finance and publish A Field Guide to British Deer having been given by The Mammal Society, work started in earnest. As Field Guide editor, Jim had the task of knitting together harmoniously the disparate and sometimes contradictory offerings of the experts he had recruited to supply the basic facts: a task he accomplished skilfully without treading on too many toes. There remained, however, a few problems to be ironed out person to person, and for this purpose Jim called a meeting of contributors at the Bedford Arms Hotel, Woburn, in January, 1956, where most of those involved, including the writer, met each other for the very first time. Apart from its primary purpose, this meeting served an important secondary one by bringing together two who were to play an important role in putting deer management in Britain’s forests on a sounder footing. One of these was J.S.R. (Jack) Chard, Forestry Commission Conservator for North West England and one of the far seeing few in positions of authority who recognised the urgent need for radical change in the way deer in our forests and elsewhere were managed. The other was Major H.A. (Herbert) Fooks, known to his friends as “Herbie”, who had been in charge of deer management in the British zone of West Germany for several years after the Second World War and was well grounded in deer management as practised in that country. Fol1owing this encounter, Herbie was appointed as the Forestry Commission’s first ever Game Warden, with responsibility for training Commission staff responsible for pest control how to control deer selectively with the rifle 5 during specified open seasons for each species and sex Herbie was one of those present at a memorable weekend field meet held by The Deer Group that August in the Lake District. Among others present was Baron Adam Konopka, the Polish-born chairman of the St. Hubert Club of Great Britain, a sporting organisation which had already initiated training for its members of managing deer which had been long practised on the Continent and were to become the basis of how this was dealt with in Great Britain. From our hotel alongside Haweswater we were able to watch wild red deer on the fells directly opposite, which we were later to view at much closer quarters on foot in brilliant sunshine. Among those on that deer watching walk over the high ground of Martindale were Dr. Peter Delap and G. Kenneth Whitehead, who were both to become Vice Presidents of the British Deer Society, as was John Willett after a lengthy term of office as Society Chairman. We were also privileged to have with us Henry Tegner, author of many books on field sports and the countryside and of a monograph on roe deer. Henry gave me a lift to Penrith station to catch my train home the following day giving me the only opportunity I ever had to spend time in his company. First published as a pocket size hardback in 1957, A Field Guide to British Deer was an instant success.