FALLOW DEER: THE MASKED HERD
Though often thought of as “just” a Norman import, the story of the fallow deer (Dama dama) in Britain is richer and more complex. Fossil remains show that fallow deer were present during interglacial periods (for example in the Eemian or Ipswichian period, about 130,000-115,000 years ago), but they died out in Britain during the last Ice Age.
The first human‐assisted re-introduction came in the Roman period. Archaeological finds (notably from Fishbourne Roman Palace in Sussex) suggest fallow deer were brought from the western Mediterranean and kept in enclosures or 'vivaria'. After the collapse of Roman power, that population seems to have died out.
They were reintroduced again in the 11th century by the Normans, this time from the eastern Mediterranean or Anatolia, and established more permanently. Over succeeding centuries, deer park culture and aristocratic hunting helped spread them, and many of today’s free-roaming populations, including that in the Chase, descend from those medieval populations.
Though not strictly native in the sense of continuous presence since the last Ice Age, fallow deer have become thoroughly naturalised in Britain. Their forms and habits are deeply woven into our woodlands, parks and cultural history, often encountered in graceful herds drifting between shadow and light.
Their mottled summer coats, white-spotted like dappled sunlight, and their great palmated antlers lend them a faintly regal, almost heraldic air, like they’ve stepped out of an illuminated manuscript.
October is the rutting season, when the bucks stake out small territories known as “stands.” They thrash the ground, clash antlers, and groan hoarsely to advertise their strength, the woodlands echoing with their peculiar calls. The strongest bucks may attract several does, leading to fawns born in high summer, often lying hidden in tall grass with just their dappled coats for camouflage.
But for all their history and beauty, there is something disquieting about them. They move in herds like drifting smoke, elegantly vanishing into cover with uncanny timing. In woodland, you rarely see just one, always a cluster, half-hidden, as though the forest itself has grown eyes. Many bodies moving as one, many eyes fixed upon you.
Fallow folklore
However there are those who say that fallow deer, rather than red or roe, are often the focus of these tales. Perhaps because of the presence of white specimens (the white hart, or hind) and also darker variants. Maybe because they were introduced, they never entirely lost the feeling of being “other”, of not quite belonging. They therefore easily take on the roles that folkloric deer often do: otherworldly guides, omens, or focal points of local wonder.
In the Chase, some say they are borrowed animals, not truly of this world, their herds moving like shadows from elsewhere. More than one poacher swore he counted the herd twice and found an extra beast among them, pale and silent.
I’d also heard a particularly odd rumour. That the fallow deer wear masks, and that what looks back at you is not always the deer at all. Curious, I met again with Rufus Penn, local wildlife expert and student of the Chase’s older mysteries, to see what he could tell me about the stories.
The Masked Ones
Rufus knows the Chase like a living map, and where the fallow herds can be found. And so we met at dusk on the edge of a field near Bowerchalke. A fallow herd stood there, statuesque, heads all raised in eerie unison as though they had known we were coming.
I asked him about this air of strangeness fallows have, their reputation in the Chase, about the masks. He nodded gravely, as though he had been expecting the questions.
“People often think of them as ornament,” he said. “Pretty creatures from royal parks and medieval tapestries. But here in the Chase, we’ve always known they're more than that. We’ve hunted them, yes, and taken their meat, but no one trusts them fully. One herd in particular, the old one, is left alone. Best that way.”
He lowered his voice. “There’s an old name for this herd: the Masked Ones. Because they say the deer in this herd don’t wear their true faces. And what stares back through those black eyes may not be deer at all.”
Rufus didn’t move. “If you watch closely,” he murmured, “sometimes you’ll see it. Not their bodies, just their faces. They shift, just for a heartbeat. A different face staring back. Not deer at all. Something older, wearing the deer-shape like a mask.”
I looked again at the herd in the clearing, waiting. Dozens of them. Still as statues, every head raised toward us. "Is it this herd? The Masked Ones?" I asked, unsettled.
“If you find yourself in their midst,” Rufus went on, ignoring my question, “and they all turn their heads to you together, you might see the mask slip. And if you do, some say it takes your reflection. You give it a piece of your face, and it lends you a piece of its own”. After a pause, "Sometimes people don’t come back at all. They run with the herd.”
Just then, the herd shifted. A ripple passed through them, bodies moving as one. And for the briefest instant, in the dying light of the dusk, I thought I saw something else: pale faces, human-like but wrong, staring out from behind the spotted hides. Then they bounded away, silent as shadows, leaving the field empty.
Whispers of the Masked Ones
Later, over a pint in the Queen's Head at Broad Chalke, Rufus told me other snippets of tales of the Masked Ones.
“Never count a fallow herd twice" he said. "If you do, and you find one more on the second count, it's a sign of the Masked Ones. The extra body could be you. It's a kind of threat, I suppose. Stay well away.”
He told of old poachers who followed fallow tracks that would end in bare soil with no exit, as though the deer had simply stepped out of the world. Sometimes there was a faint drum of hooves circling like ghosts. A sign that the Masked Ones travel between worlds.
Poachers also spoke of falling asleep in the woods and waking to the sound of hooves all around them, but opened their eyes to see nothing but the forest, and no deer tracks in the soil.
"Sometimes folk hang fallow antlers over the hearth in their homes" he said. "Folk say it brings luck. But luck’s a thin edge. It can invite the herd into your dreams. The Masked Ones step through dreams as easily as smoke through cobwebs. Leave the antlers to the woods".
He told me of a children's rhyme, that seemed to refer to the Masked Ones. “Spots in the sun, run, run, run. Spots in the shade, the mask is made.” No one knew or agreed what it meant, but none liked saying it after dark.
Finally, he told of a man who found tracks in damp mud by the Ebble, deep and perfect. He saw a man’s bare foot, set among the deer’s slotted hoof prints. He took this as a sign that there are shapes the Masked Ones wear that look like us. Or maybe once were one of us.
As we left the pub into the night, Rufus seemed thoughtful, his eyes shadowed beneath the brim of his hat. When I asked if he’d ever been with a herd and seen a mask slip, he only smiled. For an instant, his eyes seemed darker, deeper, as if something else peered out. And on his cheek, for the briefest moment, was that the pale dappling of a fallow coat in summer, or the effect of the moonlight through the roadside trees?
Back at home, I caught my reflection in the window before drawing the curtains. For a heartbeat, the face looking back at me seemed oddly still, oddly watchful. As though it were not wholly my own.
Maybe it was nothing.
Or maybe the herd had counted me in.