Deer-forests, tracts of country devoted to the red deer or fallow deer, either for sporting or for breeding purposes. The requisites of a Scotch deer-forest are a great extent of quiet ground, high mountain tops and corries, plenty of moorland and pasture. There is now little wood in Scotch deer-forests, and almost all other game, and cattle and sheep, must be excluded. One-tenth of the heather in a deer-forest should be burned every year, the heather living ten or twelve years; and in each forest a sanctuary should be provided. The forest of Mar is 80,000 acres in extent; Blackmount, 70,300; Reay, 64,600; then come fourteen of from 51,000 to 30,000; whilst the rest are smaller, some as low as 10,600 acres. The requisites of an English deer-park, on the other hand, are wood, lawn, with sufficient underwood, rough grass and bracken, in an inclosed and undulating country of rich soil. In Scotland, deer-stalking has largely increased during the 19th century. In 1812 there were only five forests; in 1888 there were 111. In England, since 1750, when fox-hunting superseded deer-hunting, deer are kept chiefly for breeding and ornament, being sometimes fed in stalls. There are, however, several packs of staghounds which hunt the red deer—e.g. in the high ground of Somerset and Devon. Before the civil war there were 700 parks in England; now only 300, of which only 30 have red deer. Among the great Scotch forests may be noted: in Aberdeenshire, Ballochbuie, Mar, Glen Tanner, Glen Muick; in Inverness-shire, Abernethy and Glenmore, Rothiemurchus, Ben Alder, Gaick and Ruthven, Glen Feshie, Glen Strath Farrar, Guisachan, Invermarkie; in Argyllshire, Blackmount; in Perthshire, Athole, Fealar, Glen Bruar, Glen Artney, Rannoch; in Ross-shire, Dundonnell, Strathconan, Torridon, Kintail, Applecross, Wyvis, Diebidale, Kinlochewe, Morsgail, Kildermorie, Glen Carron, Park; in Sutherlandshire, Dunrobin, Glendhu, Loch Inver, Reay. The deer-forests of Scotland occupy a space of nearly 2,000,000 acres. They are occupied chiefly by English noblemen and others, not the owners. The best-known English parks are Eridge in Sussex, Talton in Worcestershire, Northwich in Cheshire, Duncombe in Yorkshire, Eastwell in Kent, Donington in Leicestershire, and the royal park of Windsor. Originally, in both England and Scotland, the king's nobles and the church held special forest jurisdictions of the most oppressive kind. Thus, in Scotland, the forester might forfeit cattle and other goods found within the forest. In England, the Norman lawyers pretended that all game belonged to the king. King John had 18 forests, 13 chases, 781 parks. A chase was an open forest, not subject to special forest law; a park was an inclosed chase on the land of the owner; a purlieu was an addition made to an old forest. The Charta de Foresta disafforested large tracts of land, and prevented the arbitrary creation of forests. In Scotland, the
Stewarts passed many statutes for the protection of deer, and so late as 1680, in the case of Faskally, the Court of Session recommended the king not to grant new forests, as hurtful to the lieges. In 1850 the Duke of Athole claimed a right to enter on the neighbouring estates to recover deer, but this was not permitted. It is the opinion of many that deer-forests have displacedcrofters and sheep in the Scotch Highlands. This was denied by a Select Committee of the House of Commons, who reported on the Game Laws in 1872. An act on the valuation of deer-forests for purposes of assessment was passed in 1887: there was a government report showing the area and rents of the Scottish deer-forests in 1891–92.
See Shirley, Forest Laws; books on the English deer-parks by Shirley (1867) and Whittaker (1892); Macdonald's Cattle, Sheep, and Deer (1872); Macrae's Handbook of Deer-stalking (Edin. 1880); the Report of the Crofters Commission (1884); Johnston's large map of Scottish deer-forests (1888); and Grimble's Deer-Forests of Scotland (1896).