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Bluebells again
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Do you know what sort of beast this is? I don’t know my deer very well.
If it’s a muntjac (and I can’t say it looks quite right, but I don’t know)
then you should report it here http://www.invasivespeciesireland.com/news/alert.aspPete
Hi Pete,
I’m not an expert on deer identification but to me it looked like one of the ones that has been running around our family farm in Wicklow for the last 20 years and eating all the young trees. I’d estimate it was over 1m to the shoulder and I understand the muntjac are a lot smaller. Our forester guy told me a few months ago they are about the same size as a German Shepherd dog.
If I get home in time tonight I’ll post another picture which might give a better idea of this one’s size.
If anyone can identify this deer it would be great.
We have just planted about 15 acres of Oak on our farm. Although it’s deer fenced we live in fear of the muntjac arriving as apparently they can wriggle through tiny gaps and do just as much damage as a full sized deer. They would just love to eat young oak trees.
Aedan
Well I looked at some pics of muntjac and they look different from this
one to me. Thing is, I can’t find a deer that looks just like this.15 acres of oak sounds nice. It must be a long-term project if it’s forestry,
or is it just a plan to return part of Ireland to its pre-historic condition?The picture at the link below might give a better idea of the deer’s size. It’s heavily cropped from one taken with a 20mm lens. There are two deer in the picture, the one on the right left before I could change to a longer lens. The picture is bigger than the PI guidelines so I’m just linking to it rather than posting it in this thread.
http://www.toorane.com/PhotographyIreland/TwoDeer.jpg
Hopefully my grandkids, or possibly even my great grandkids, will get to decide whether the Oak is commercial or ecological. Be nice if they could leave it there. Since my eldest kid is only 13 at the moment I’ve got a while to wait. At the moment the Oak is about 0.5m high and Oak grews very slowly.
Aedan
I have a forester here who says it’s a Sika/Red hybrid, any other thoughts?
Aedan
It’s either a Sika or a Red/Sika hybrid – but nothing else. Don’t know how to tell difference. A hunter saw a pic of mine of a Sika stag, he said there was Red blood in him going by the pattern of how the antlers branched out. For certain, it’s defo not a Muntjac.
Thanks everyone for the comments and the deer identification. I was really quite alarmed at the thought it could have been a Muntjac deer, they can do a huge amount of damage to forests.
Aedan
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