Identifying the six UK deer species
Six deer species live wild in the UK: red, sika, fallow, roe, muntjac and Chinese water deer. The DSC1 visual assessment shows twenty images and asks for species, then species and sex. The two pairs that catch candidates out are summer sika against fallow, and winter sika against red.
Almost every continental big game hunter is familiar with roe, red and sometimes fallow deer. But in the UK there are a great number of sika deer and muntjac, and these species are little known by continental hunters — especially the Chinese water deer. The visual assessment is where that gap shows.
The six, and their terms
The sex and age terms are not interchangeable between species, and using the wrong one in front of an assessor or a landowner is the fastest way to sound like somebody who has read about deer rather than culled them.
| Species | Male | Female | Young |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red | stag | hind | calf |
| Sika | stag | hind | calf |
| Fallow | buck | doe | fawn |
| Roe | buck | doe | kid |
| Muntjac | buck | doe | fawn |
| Chinese water deer | buck | doe | fawn |
Red and sika share the stag, hind and calf set. Everything else uses buck and doe.
The two confusions
Summer sika against fallow. Both carry a spotted summer coat. Sika spots are smaller, less regular and set on a browner ground; fallow spots are bolder against a more rufous coat. The reliable tell is the rump and tail: fallow have a long tail with a black border down a white rump patch, sika a short tail and a rump patch they flare when alarmed. Antlers separate them completely — fallow are palmated, sika branched.
Winter sika against red. Both lose the spots and darken. Sika are smaller, but size is unreliable in an image with nothing to compare against. Look at the head: sika carry a distinctive pale patch above the eye and a more compact face. Red are plainer and heavier through the neck, especially a stag in the rut.
Muntjac and Chinese water deer
Both are small, both are unfamiliar, and both are worth ten minutes each rather than the glance a continental stalker instinctively gives them.
Muntjac are hunched, with a steeply sloping back and short pedicled antlers on the buck. They breed all year round, which is why there is no closed season for the doe — a legal point the written module is fond of.
Chinese water deer carry no antlers at all. The buck has visible tusks. They are found mainly in East Anglia, and once you have seen one you will not mistake it, which is precisely why candidates who have never seen one hesitate.
How to prepare for the visual assessment
Twenty images: the first ten ask for species only, the last ten for species and sex. Sixteen correct to pass. Most of the ground candidates make up is made up in the training session over dinner the evening before, which is the reason the assessment starts with a dinner rather than a lie-in.
Work on the two confusions above and on sexing animals in winter coat, which is harder than sexing them in summer. Work from photographs rather than from illustrations: the assessment uses photographs, and a plate in a book flatters the diagnostic features in a way a real animal in poor light does not.
Last reviewed .