Royal Parks has issued a stark warning after footage showed a man and toddler, among a group of up to seven people, stroking wild stags in Richmond Park.
The film appeared on social media over the weekend and shows the group crowding around the deer as they grazed. The charity that runs the park called the behaviour “deeply irresponsible and highly dangerous” and said it could cause “life-changing injuries or, in the worst case, a fatal incident.”
The advice is simple: stay at least 50 metres from the deer at all times, further if they are moving, and never touch, feed or photograph them at close range. The animals are wild. A stag can weigh more than 25 stone and run at up to 30 miles an hour, fast and heavy enough to badly hurt anyone who gets in its way.
Richmond Park has no fence between the deer and the paths, car parks and picnic lawns. The herds have roamed it freely since Charles I enclosed the park in 1637. So a stag will happily graze a few feet from a parked car, and that closeness is not an invitation.
“Although they may appear calm, they can react suddenly and aggressively if they feel threatened,” said Paul Richards, the park manager. A deer standing quietly by the road is still a wild animal, and the 50-metre rule applies just as much there as it does out in the open.
The park is in its deer birthing season, which runs from 1 May to 31 July. Fawns lie hidden in long grass and bracken, hinds are protective of them, and dogs must be kept on a lead everywhere in the park until the end of the month..
If a deer does come towards you, do not wave or shout. Back away slowly. If you are actually charged, put a car or a solid tree between you and the animal, and let any dog off its lead, since it can escape more easily and may be what unsettled the deer in the first place.
Roehampton Gate, the entrance closest to Putney and Roehampton, where there is currently a new café taking shape, is one of the park’s main access points, and the deer graze right up to it.
I remember when there were sheep and a Shepherd at Richmond Park along with deer. Human ignorance is to blame if an accident should happen!