Bambi in Sherwood Forest and the Great Deer Escape c. 1703–1711

Abstract

A combination of natural and human factors led to the ‘great deer escape’ from Sherwood Forest in the early eighteenth century. Hundreds of red deer searched for food and shelter outside the royal forest boundary during the harsh winters of the early 1700s, blissfully unaware of the imminent dangers and the long-term threats to their survival. Inside the forest bounds royal deer were protected by ancient forest laws, but outside they were fair game for hunters, especially after English game laws were changed in the later seventeenth century, which allowed gentlemen to hunt on their forest lands in the “purlieus” or grounds formerly part of the royal forest. My paper addresses the causes of this mass migration, the implications for both animals and humans, and efforts to safeguard the royal deer outside the forest. Contemporaries blamed the migration of royal deer outside Sherwood Forest on the felling activities of previous Stuart monarchs; however, the situation was more complex. An historical environmental perspective shows there were more underlying factors at play than purely human intervention. The great deer escape in the early eighteenth century resulted from decades of human activity, coinciding with a period of climatic worsening, especially the cooling years of the Maunder Minimum, and the combined needs and agency of Sherwood’s wild deer population.