Water Deer Interaction with Humans - Culture
Human connections with water deer stretch back millennia – from their appearance in ancient Chinese poetry and folklore, through thousands of years of archaeological evidence across China and Taiwan, to their more recent role in British commerce and as hand-reared companion animals.
Table of contents
Folklore & Symbolism
Evolving from hunter-gatherer ancestors, humans have an intertwined history with deer that dates back millennia. In Europe, the role deer play in human culture is well documented, with bountiful myths, legends, heraldic crests and so forth. I expect that there is a similarly rich cultural history of deer in Asia but have found the literature more difficult to access. River deer, described as being smaller and "more beautiful" than normal deer, nonetheless appear in the Chu Elegies, an anthology of Chinese poetry from the Zhou dynasty dating back to the second century AD, and, given that early farmers tended to settle near waterways, water deer were probably the most frequently encountered cervids.
Writing in a fascinating book review in Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews during 2014, Mark Bender reviewed the translation of Rhapsody in Black, a series of 72 Chinese poems by ground-breaking Chinese writer Jidi Majia – part of the Yi ethnic group in Sichuan province whose culture dates back at least two millennia. Bender noted that zhangzi, the water deer "often appears as shape-shifting transformative beings in Yi folklore" and images of this once-common, antler-less species apparently also appears in many contemporary Nuosu poems and traditional literature.
Card #109 of the Wildlife Fact File series, published in 1990, which covered Hydropotes, mentions that the species was thought to have magical powers in China owing to the ease with which they disappear into cover and remain out of sight. I've also seen some anecdotal suggestion that the water deer was often associated with good fortune, longevity, and spirituality in some Chinese folklore, although there is often confusion about the precise species being referred to in the translations, and I suspect much of this actually relates to the Père David's deer, or mílù (Elaphurus davidianus). I have found virtually nothing with regards to Korean folklore, and South Korean naturalist Junha Kim told me, in December 2024, that "water deer do not appear in Korean myths or folktales that have been preserved so far", going on to mention that a lot of the early literature does not distinguish between water deer and other species, such as roe or sika. The A-Z-Animals website mentions, however, that it was once forbidden to hunt 고라니 (gorani, a Korean name for water deer) in (South?) Korea because the bite was considered fatal. The site doesn't provide a reference for this statement and I've been unable to find anything to corroborate it. I can't help wondering whether a mistranslation of verminous (i.e., a pest) to venomous lies at the root of it.
The only cultural reference to the species in North Korea of which I am aware is its depiction on a series of postage stamps. The first was issued in 2001, followed by a second in 2021 where the water deer appeared alongside other emblematic national fauna, including tigers and martens. The 70₩ stamp (2001) featured an adult deer and a fawn, whereas the 30₩ (2021) issue pictured a buck standing in the foreground with a doe resting behind it on the bank of a stream. Intriguingly, there is also at least one Cambodian stamp featuring a water deer, issued in 1999 with a 900 riel denomination.
Deer are well established in British heraldry, but at the time of writing I don't know how commonly they appear on Chinese or Korean family crests. Having reviewed Kenneth Whitehead's comprehensive section on the subject in his Encyclopaedia of Deer, I found none with obviously tusked deer, but there was a strong European bias in the coverage. In 2022, YouTube user Zed Dez recounted a story to me that he heard from his grandmother, Chung Rose, about how the Icheon Seo clan came to appreciate river deer, swearing never to hunt them and including them on their family crest, after his ancestors were inadvertently saved from a rockslide by a herd:
"It's an old Korean story from back in the times of family clans waging war with each other for land. Our family was sending an army into battle, but along the way they would have to march along a cliffside path. Along the path they found an entire herd of water deer and were forced to stop and move them. This took time because Korean deer can be...grumpy, and they refused to budge. Before the army could move on there was a rock slide just beyond the deer; the soldiers realized that if the deer weren't blocking the path many of them would have been crushed or fallen off the edge. This would have also left the village unprotected in a time of war."
I would love to hear from readers with similar family legends, or who are familiar with water deer in Chinese or Korean folklore. Online there is plenty of reference to deer appearing on charms in Chinese culture, and I have seen 18th century Chinese pottery from the Qing dynasty depicting a deer that could easily be Hydropotes, but again I would like to hear from readers with other specific examples.
Archaeology
At Niupodong Cave in Guizhou, south-west China, water deer remains turn up in each of the three earliest phases of occupation, from the Terminal Upper Palaeolithic (about 15,000 years ago) to the Early–Middle Holocene (about 3,550 BCE), and in the early Holocene layers two of their tusks appear to have been used as tools. In their 2026 paper to Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, Yongxu Fu and colleagues interpret the cave's fauna as reflecting long-term reliance on forest-based hunting, and stable isotope data from the site point to a forested landscape. Chinese water deer are generally regarded as a wetland and edge-living species, but they're highly adaptable and also found in mountain forests and farmland across their range.
The two tools unearthed by Fu and his team are a left and a right upper canine and date from about 8250–6750 BCE. Both are broken and heavily worn. Near the tip they bear intersecting micro-striations different from unworn areas of the same teeth, while the inner surface shows deliberate scraping and grinding, probably to smooth the join between dentine and enamel. Comparison with wear on other worked bone suggests that the teeth were used as debarking tools, or to process silica-rich plants such as rice (Oryza sativa). Given that water deer very rarely eat bark and their tusks are not known to be involved in the acquisition or processing of food, the authors consider it unlikely that the wear came from the deer's own feeding activities. They stress, though, that the function of the tools can only be speculated upon at this stage.
Further north, in Shandong Province, archaeologists excavated the early Holocene (about 9700 to 6300 BCE) site of Xiaogao in 2017. Among many cultural remains -- including house remains, pottery and ash pits -- they found numerous animal bones, of which Chinese water deer were the most common. In their 2023 paper to Acta Anthropologica Sinica, Yao Gao and colleagues noted that water deer were one of the main animal resources used by prehistoric people in China, occupying an important position in their subsistence. Based on the bone remains, the authors suggest that people may have influenced the local population structure by targeting individuals between seven and 24 months old, and that deer were mostly taken during winter and spring, when other food resources were scarce.
Along the Yangtze River, Yoshinori Yasuda described -- in the chapter on the discovery of the Yangtze River Culture in his 2012 book Water Civilization -- how an excavation during 2000 of just over 40 ritual pits beside a rice paddy field at Pentoushan, about 1.5 km (1 mile) south-east of Chengtoushan, uncovered four with human skeletons. In one pit, within an earthen mound, deer bones lay on top of a skeleton buried in a flexed (foetal) position. A positive identification wasn't possible, but the authors noted that the bones most closely resembled those of a Chinese water deer. The bones weren't dated directly, but rice husks from the same layers suggest that the paddy was being farmed at about 6650–5850 BCE.
In his 2014 Ph.D. thesis for University College London, Ying Zhang described water deer among the remains from Neolithic deposits of the Lower Yangtze River region at Tianluoshan, which date to 4900–4000 BCE.
Water deer teeth appear to have subsequently taken on a ceremonial role among the Dawenkou people of the lower Yellow River region, whose culture flourished from roughly 4100 to 2600 BCE. In a 2020 paper to Jianghan Archaeology, Bowen Yuan and colleagues noted that teeth of water deer, and hook-shaped objects made from them, were often buried in Dawenkou tombs. The hook-shaped objects were most often found in the tombs of adults, whom the authors rank as the upper-middle class of society and who may have served as hosts of ceremonies and rituals. Many of the teeth were clearly unprocessed and were held in the hands of the deceased. The authors believe that the teeth were related to tooth ablation (i.e., the ritual removal of teeth), a practice among the Dawenkou that they consider to have been influenced by the Peiligang culture.
In a 2018 paper to Southeast Culture, Su Zhang and Xuan Wang described how the burial of tusks became steadily more frequent at the site of Dawenkou itself: about one in five of the early tombs contained them, about two in three of the middle-phase tombs and over four in five of the late ones. They found tusks in large and small tombs and in children's graves, arguing that the custom marked membership of a community with shared beliefs and not a rank. They also proposed that removing the upper lateral incisors by the Dawenkou imitated the water deer -- a species with no upper incisors and prominent tusks -- as an expression of veneration for the animal. Some tusks had sharpened tips, and others were hafted in antler, bone or wood handles to form hook-shaped objects. By the Longshan period that followed, the custom had all but vanished.
In a 2025 paper to Archaeological Research in Asia, Shuhan Zhang and colleagues reported remains of water deer, sika deer, fish and abundant freshwater shellfish from Late Dawenkou to Longshan deposits (about 3050–2050 BCE) at Qianzhongzitou, on the Jiaolai Plain in Shandong. The authors place these finds in a subsistence system based on crops alongside domestic pigs and dogs, in which hunting, fishing and gathering made a supplementary contribution to the local food supply.
In their review of deer at archaeological sites in northern China, published in Human Ecology during 2023, Katherine Brunson and Brian Lander tabulated the proportion of sites yielding each deer species. Among Neolithic sites (8000–1800 BCE), only sika deer (Cervus nippon) were more widespread than water deer, which appeared at 31 (41%) of 75 sites. Working from their table, however, the picture changes through time. Water deer were present at about half of the Early and Middle Neolithic sites (50% and 48%), at a third of Late Neolithic sites (33%), and at only 22% of post-Neolithic sites (after about 1800 BCE), by which time they ranked fourth. That decline is steeper than for sika or roe deer (Capreolus capreolus).
Su Zhang and Xuan Wang, drawing on earlier work by Qing Wang and colleagues, linked a sharp fall in water deer numbers from about 4,200 years ago to climatic cooling, noting that the species was absent from the North China Plain some 10,000 years ago, had reached Henan by about 8,000 to 7,500 years ago, and was most widespread between about 6,500 and 5,000 years ago. Fu and colleagues likewise attribute the species' restricted modern range to a contraction of its ecological niche during the Holocene. Whether the fall in site records reflects declining numbers, changing hunting, or both remains unclear, although we continue to find water deer remains in later periods, both in China and elsewhere.
Hunting game species formed an important component of early Chinese cultures, as it did in many parts of Europe. Brunson and Lander note that deer were widely regarded as symbols of untamed natural forces, and that large-scale hunts organised by Shang rulers served not only to symbolically subdue these forces, but also to reduce populations of animals that could damage crops, while simultaneously training participants for warfare. In their 2020 paper to the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, Yue Li and colleagues reported the recovery of water deer remains from an archaeological site at Zaoshugounao in present-day Shaanxi in north-west China, associated with the predynastic Zhou and dating back to about 1040 BCE, suggesting that their association with humans persisted well after the Neolithic. The Book of Rites describes the elaborate rituals associated with deer hunting during the Zhou dynasty, underscoring the cultural and ceremonial significance of the practice.
In 1923, eminent Swedish archaeologist Johan Gunnar Andersson discovered the bones of a water deer in connection with remains of the pivotal Han dynasty, dating back some 2,000 years, in a peat bog about 50 km (30 miles) east of modern-day Beijing.
In a paper to Collection and Research in 2017, Yen-Jean Chen and colleagues provide the first archaeological evidence of an isolated, prehistoric insular population of water deer in Taiwan. By re-evaluating jaw and canine specimens from four Iron Age sites (about 550–1550 CE) in the Taichung area -- which had previously been misidentified as Reeves's muntjac (Muntiacus reevesi) -- the authors confirmed the presence of water deer through distinct craniomandibular and dental traits, such as long, scythe-like upper canines and molariform lower fourth premolars. The findings indicate that the species was once widespread across the island's coastal wetlands and floodplains, serving as a key palaeoenvironmental indicator for Taichung's historically dynamic riverine landscape. The archaeological data, along with local historical documents, led the authors to conclude that the population survived into the 19th century before being driven to extinction within the last 200 years through extensive habitat conversion for agriculture and over-hunting for meat, hides, and medicinal colostrum.
Commerce & Companionship
I know of no specific influence of water deer on British culture beyond the use of their simulacrum to sell an alcoholic drink. Showerings Ltd. are, to the best of my knowledge, the only English brewery to have owned water deer, the family having purchased three from the Duke of Bedford in 1961 and kept on their site at Shepton Mallet in Somerset. According to Frederick Hingston in his 1988 book Deer Parks and Deer of Great Britain, the herd was tended to by one of the factory workers in an enclosure of about one-third of a hectare (0.8 acres).
Twenty-four animals were on the site at its peak, according to the company's website. The water deer were reputedly used as the foundation for a cartoon mascot, designed by the advertising agency now known as D'Arcy-MacManus & Masius, that appeared in the advertising campaign for Showerings' sparkling perry Babycham during the 1970s. According to an article in The Daily Telegraph on 7th September 1995:
"A Chinese water deer called the Babycham was depicted in advertisements as a prancing cartoon character, similar to Walt Disney's Bambi. It was believed the animal appealed to women."
Curiously, the Babycham caricature is much more akin to a small antelope than a deer, sporting what appear to be horns. Unfortunately, Showerings were unable to provide me with any details of the animals' time on site, or what happened to the population.
Beyond their brief commercial use by Showerings, water deer that are hand-reared from orphaned or abandoned fawns sometimes become companion animals, developing bonds with their human carers -- and with other domestic pets -- more typical of a dog or cat than a wild deer. Writing in 1953, Kenneth Whitehead described one such doe, found abandoned as a newborn fawn at Woburn in Bedfordshire during June 1952 and reared by Mr T.A. Hayward. "Dawn" became a fully dog-like pet: playing with the family cat, resting alongside their Angora rabbit as "friends", and accompanying Hayward on regular walks, always returning when called. Dawn remained wary of anyone outside the household until she was around seven months old, at which point Whitehead described her as "absurdly tame". More recently, Yorkshire-based countryman Chris Whyke received a fawn from Bedfordshire in 2022 that he hand-reared; "Biscuit", the doe, is now four years old and she still lives in his house and garden, playing and sleeping alongside his dogs, coming when called, and remaining happy to be stroked as an adult. At Beckerings Park, Paul Childerley hand-reared an orphaned male fawn after its mother was killed by a dog in June 2026; it enjoyed being stroked, played and slept with his dogs, and came when called for food, before it was killed by a fox roughly four months later.
Not every hand-reared animal forms such an even-handed bond, however. One zoo keeper who has hand-reared many water deer told me that their animals invariably remained closely bonded to their female carers for life, but that from around a year old they tended to become wary of, or actively flee from, male keepers who raised them as fawns – the opposite of what Hayward and Whyke have observed in their deer. A similar pattern was reported at Wildwood in Kent, which received a buck and a doe into its collection in 2025: the doe, from Whipsnade, settled calmly with all the keepers regardless of sex, while the buck, from a private collection, remained highly nervous, hiding in the centre of the enclosure and fleeing from anyone other than the woman who had raised him. In late June 2022, I watched a young fawn follow its keeper around its enclosure like a puppy, only to throw itself repeatedly at the enclosure walls, screaming, once the keeper left: a reminder that the attachment these animals form to a hand-rearer can run deep, with consequences that aren't always benign once the animal must eventually be independent.
References
Andersson, J.G. (1923). Essays on the Cenozoic of Northern China. Memoirs of the Geological Survey of China. 3A: 1-152.
Andersson, J. G. (1943). Researches into the Prehistory of the Chinese. Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities. 15: 1-304.
Bender, M. (2014). Reviewed Work(s): Rhapsody in Black. Chinese Literature Today Book Series by Jidi Majia and Denis Mair. Chinese Literature. 36: 201-204.
Brunson, K. & Lander, B. (2023). Deer and humans in the early farming communities of the Yellow River Valley: A symbolic relationship. Human Ecology. 51: 609-625.
Chen, Y-J. et al. (2017). New record of water deer (Hydropotes inermis) from Iron Age archeological sites in central Taiwan. Collection and Research. 30: 23-31.
Fu, Y. et al. (2026). Cultural and social innovations in southwestern China during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences. 18: 179.
Gao, Y. et al. (2023). Utilization of the Chinese water deer of early Holocene by human from the Xiaogao site, Shandong Province. Acta Anthropologica Sinica. 42(2): 238-247.
Hingston, F. (1988). Deer Parks & Deer of Great Britain. Sporting & Leisure Press, Buckingham.
Li, Y. et al. (2020). Animal use in the late second millennium BCE in northern China: Evidence from Zaoshugounao and Zaolinhetan in the Jing River valley. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. 30: 318-329.
Qing, W. et al. (1994). A tentative discussion on the origin and development of prehistoric tooth extirpation customs in the Haidai Region. Southeast Culture. (4): 79-90. [In Chinese]
Stimpson, C.M. et al. (2021). Confirmed archaeological evidence of water deer in Vietnam: relics of the Pleistocene or a shifting baseline? Royal Society Open Science. 8: 210529.
Whitehead, G.K. (1953). A Tame Chinese Water-Deer. Country Life. 113(2941): 1691.
Whitehead, G.K. (1993). The Whitehead Encyclopedia of Deer. Swan Hill Press, London.
Yasuda, Y. (2012). Discovery of the Yangtze River Civilization in China. In Yasuda, Y. (ed). Water Civilization. Springer Nature, Japan.
Yuan, B. et al. (2020). Study on the custom of buried water deer canines in the Dawenkou culture. Jianghan Archaeology. (5): 51-59. [In Chinese]
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Zhang, S. et al. (2025). Shifting crop choices in a transition zone: Macrobotanical insights from Shandong, Eastern China (5000-2200 cal. BP). Archaeological Research in Asia. 44: 100665.
Zhang, Y. (2014). Animal procurement in the Late Neolithic of the Yangtze River Basin: Integrating the fish remains into a case-study from Tianluoshan. Ph.D. Thesis for University College London, Institute of Archaeology. 364pp.