Water Deer Interaction with Humans - Hunting & Poaching

Here in the UK, the killing and taking of deer is regulated under the Wildlife (Northern Ireland) Order 1985, the Deer Act 1991, and the Deer (Scotland) Act 1996. In addition, the Wild Mammals (Protection) Act 1996 and parts of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 also apply to deer and regulate the way they may be killed. The Deer Act 1991 applies to England and Wales and essentially makes it illegal to enter any land without consent of the landowner to search for, pursue, or, with the intention of taking, kill or injure a deer - doing so is thus considered a poaching offense. It's not an offense if the hunter either has permission or believes they'd have been given consent, however, nor if the animal killed is seriously injured. The Act also specifies how deer may be taken, including the closed seasons, which for water deer was amended in 2007 under the The Regulatory Reform (Deer) (England and Wales) Order to reduce the shooting season to the five months extending from November until the end of March. Paul Childerley has argued that, where large numbers are being managed, it would be beneficial to start the cull in August and run through to May, to cover late drilling of crops. The rationale for the short open season, however, is that sexing water deer from a distance can be a significant challenge and thus it's safest to treat them the same, although Childerley remains unconvinced by this argument.

In Britain, the venison market is growing slowly, thanks in part to several recent initiatives aimed at boosting consumption, although this is in the face of the apparently low price offered by many game dealers. In May 2025, as an example, stalkers were reporting only about £0.35 (€0.42 / US$0.47) per kg being offered by game dealers for water deer in some areas. That said, in June 2025, the British Deer Society put out a call to stalkers in Suffolk regarding a project to increase the number of Reeves muntjac (Muntiacus reevesi) and water deer being shot in the county, the carcasses going to The Country Food Trust who will process and distribute the venison to food banks and homeless shelters - £20 (€23 / US$27) was being offered per carcass. Data published by Kantar suggest that, more broadly, in the year to April 2022, the total annual spend within the venison market was £15.2 million (€17.7 m or US$19.4 m), although much of that came from farmed deer and data are lacking for the wild game market.

Of the different species, water deer venison has historically been considered one of the more palatable and, writing in The Field in June 1945, for example, the Duke of Bedford extolled its virtues

"Chinese water-deer venison is the most delicious meat I have ever tasted, tender, wholesome and well-flavoured, and very many people who have tried it concur with me in holding it in the highest esteem."

In an article to The Shooting Times in June 2019 about venison, Sam Carlisle and Nick Weston described how that of the water deer had a larger grain than muntjac, making it more tender and with hardly any "deer-like" (i.e., gamey) taste. Hydropotes is also fattier than other deer species, particularly along the back, the carcasses looking more like lamb than deer, and I have seen it sold as "gourmet venison" in England. In my personal opinion, it is the nicest venison I have eaten, but my experience beyond this extends only to roe and fallow.

Historically, at least, in its native range water deer venison has been less sought-after and, writing in his 1870 description of the species, Robert Swinhoe noted:

"Their venison is coarse and without much taste, but is considered tolerable for want of better; it is the only venison procurable in Shanghai."

At the time, Swinhoe observed that the deer were killed only for the European market and sold at a low price, owing largely to the Chinese having "an extraordinary dislike for their flesh". Indeed, three years later, Swinhoe wrote of hunting parties bringing back 30 deer at a time such that all season the market had "been perfectly glutted with them; and numbers rot for want of consumers", and the carcasses apparently fetched a very low price. In Shooting in China, published nearly four decades later, in 1908, US consul in Kobe Thomas Jernigan described a similar situation:

"On excellent authority it may be stated that over 2,500 deer are sold during the season in the Shanghai markets, and that seldom is the price of $2.00 per head exceeded. Such venison as is afforded by the river deer is by no means considered a table luxury, but the flesh, nevertheless, constitutes in conjunction with good beef steak a valuable base for a game pie."

Jernigan also mentions that dishes of "jugged hare" and "hare soup" may be derived from river deer meat. In their 1984 Chinese paper to Acta Therologica Sinica, Helin Sheng and Houji Lu state that since 1976, the annual kill of water deer in the Zhoushan archipelagos alone was estimated at 650 to 850 animals, with 450 to 600 hunted during the winter.

We know nothing of the status or utilisation of water deer in North Korea, but naturalist Junha Kim told me that in South Korea water deer meat is not sold commercially and tends only to be eaten by the hunters or their friends/family, with most carcasses either used (illegally) for herbal remedies or sent for incineration. Indeed, being classed as a "verminous animal", several provinces offer bounty schemes and in 2022 Junha explained:

"When hunters hunt water deer, they cut their tails as evidence and submit them to local governments to receive rewards. The amount of rewards varies from region to region, but according to the above-mentioned news, approximately KRW 20,000 to 40,000 [£12-24 / US$15-30 / €14-28] is paid to one, and according to last year and this year's news, some regions have raised the amount to KRW 50,000 to 70,000. [£30-42 / US$39-54 / €35-49]"

As well as venison, in Britain water deer bucks are prized for their tusks, and there is a well-established water deer stalking industry in England, with clients coming from all over the world to shoot deer in East Anglia, Bedfordshire, and Buckinghamshire. Prices for the stalking varies locally, but I've seen around £160 for a couple of days in the field, plus the price for the deer, with females and young bucks (i.e., up to a centimetre of exposed tusk) selling for about £150, and medal bucks significantly more. In 2022, one outfit in Norfolk offered bronze bucks for £375 each, silver for £400 and gold for £450, with the carcass costing an extra £20. I'm told that some stalking outfits will charge close to £1,000 for a gold medal buck. Harvesting water deer for one reason or another is increasingly popular in England and, in their 2021 annual review, the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust calculated that there had been an 18-fold increase in the number of water deer shot between 2008 and 2020.

While the species can be flighty when disturbed, they can be relatively easy to shoot. In some arable areas, however, their propensity for lying out in the middle of fields with little ground cover can make them difficult to stalk, necessitating a ground crawl and shot from at least 250 metres (820 ft.). Childerley recommends a 22-250 (i.e., .22) calibre rifle for shooting Chinese water deer and, on his ground, animals are skinned while still warm, which reduces the hair shed during the skinning process, and hung in a chiller before being boned a day or two later. The offal goes to make dog food. Nowadays, one assumes deer are hunted in China and Korea in much the same way or with shotguns, but in his 1908 opus, Jernigan described how Shanghai hunters would beat the long flat reed beds at the northern end of the Poyang lake at Hukou, which were easily accessible in their shallow boats and favoured resting spots for the deer, flushing the deer into the water where they were "stunned by the heavy bamboo as they are killed with the native favourite load of mixed iron shot".

In addition to reducing deer numbers to protect crops, the species is very attractive to coursers. In an article to Shooting Times & Country Magazine in January 2008, Ian Valentine noted that landowners will often aim to reduce the number of water deer on the land not through fear of potential for crop damage, but because they attract coursers and then the farmer has long-dogs on the land, as well as the associated problems their owners bring. Childerley has told me that he tries to deter the deer on his estate in Bedfordshire from gathering in fields visible from the motorway to avoid drawing unwanted attention from "dog boys" and poachers, which have caused significant issues on the estate. In a 2015 article for Shooting Times and Country Magazine, Childerley noted that mature bucks won't leave their territories, even in the face of the cars and lamps of coursers, making them easy targets for the dogs, and the coursers aren't interested in the meat so often don't take the carcasses with them. Likewise, in Muntjac and Water Deer, Arnold Cooke wrote:

"I have heard reports of contests with dogs being live-streamed to public houses in London for gambling purposes. And there have been instances of abandoned dogs going on to kill more deer."

Cooke goes on to mention incidents of semi-organised poaching of water deer in western Cambridgeshire, in some of the more accessible fields near Holme Fen, and at least once at the more isolated Woodwalton Fen reserve.

Poaching has also been, and likely remains, a significant threat to water deer in China where the species is targeted for its meat and the semi-digested milk found in the rumen of unweaned fawns, which is used in traditional medicine (see Traditional/folk medicine). In his 1996 thesis, Endi Zhang noted that, despite being listed as a "Class Two Category" (nationally protected) animal, requiring specific permission from provincial authorities for it to be caught or handled, law enforcement is insufficient to prevent widespread poaching for venison, and several authors have reported dwindling populations in the Yancheng Nature Reserve and many former strongholds because of high levels of poaching.

In a subsequent article to Deer, published in 2000, Zhang estimated that 300 to 500 poachers visited Zhoushan every year and that many of the carcasses were sold to restaurants in Zhujiajian, Taohua and Shenjiamen Town, as well as the adjacent Ningbo City on the mainland. Zhang's survey suggested that most poachers were agricultural labourers or farmers ("peasants" as the article referred to them) aged between 30 and 50 years old; about half took adult deer using homemade rifles, leg traps and snares, while the other half were only interested in fawns (see Traditional/folk medicine). The price for the meat peaked during Chinese New Year in February, reaching 32 ¥ per kg (US$4/kg, at the time), according to Zhang. Min Chen and her colleagues also found evidence of poaching at their reintroduction project sites in the Nanhui Wildlife Sanctuary, four deer having died within the first six months either through poaching or unexplained causes.

Behavioural response

Water deer are behaviourally similar to rabbits and hares in that, when faced with danger, they will duck low in cover and remain quiet and motionless, before erupting away at the last minute. John Heathcote, who manages the Claxton Manor estate in Norfolk, told me that water deer are the only species he knows that can be disturbed standing on the edge of a copse and flee away from the trees rather than into them, something I have also observed. On two occasions, both with does (females), I observed a deer to "pseudo-graze" -- where the deer spots something suspicious and puts its head down "pretending" to feed, an action that might make a predator think it's not been spotted and therefore move, but while keeping their eyes fixed on the source -- which is a behaviour I have hitherto only come across in roe deer (Capreolus capreolus). 

Humans appear to be perceived as a threat in most instances, and this can make water deer very difficult to approach. In their 1981 Nature Conservancy Council report, Arnold Cooke and Lynne Farrell described how, during the autumn of 1976, they attempted to assess how close the deer at Woodwalton Fen in Cambridgeshire would tolerate being approached. Across 22 encounters, the mean flight distance was 36 m (118 ft.) -- i.e., the observer could get to 36 m away before the deer ran away -- although the range was from 8 m (26 ft.) to 79 m (260 ft.) according to age and the habitat in which they were approached. Younger deer tended to be less flighty than adults, and those in the reserve could often be approached more closely than those in the surrounding arable fields. Reflecting on this in June 2025, Arnold told me: "I remember it was quite difficult to get a deer in a situation where it could be recorded properly, i.e. in the open where I could approach it in full view without it dashing off immediately or even before I'd seen it.".

The overall timid nature of water deer is evident even in captivity, unless they've been hand-reared, which can make them strongly imprinted on their human "parent". At Whipsnade Zoo, where the deer see people throughout the year, my experience has been that they remain relatively skittish and can be difficult to observe at close quarters without the cover of a vehicle, although they're still easier to approach than wild individuals. Richard Champion demonstrated this empirically during his B.Sc. thesis at Whipsnade in 1996, finding that water deer using public areas of the zoo adapted to human disturbance by significantly reducing their average flight distance (i.e., the minimum distance at which they fled). Deer utilising public parts of the complex could be approached to within 17.5 metres (56 ft.), on average, while those using the private (off-show) areas fled when an observer came to within 35 m (115 ft.). There was considerable individual variation in the distance run when disturbed, 'public deer' fleeing between two and 110 m (6.5-361 ft.), while those off-show moved between four and 120 m (13-400 ft.). Perhaps more interestingly, Champion observed that flight distances were longer (i.e., the deer were more skittish) during the morning than the evening in public areas, while those off-show were much more consistent throughout the day. Females were generally more sensitive to disturbance than males.

Champion's findings were broadly replicated by Xin-Xin Tian in his M.Sc. studies at East China Normal University, during which he compared the response to human approach among free-ranging captive deer kept at the Songjiang Punan forest park to that of wild deer living on the Yancheng Nature Reserve in Jiangsu Province. Vigilance/alert behaviour consisted of five elements: listening, scanning, staring (which may or may not be accompanied by neck stretching), walking or running away, and barking. At no point did Tian observe water deer acting aggressively towards a potential threat. Songjiang deer stopped what they were doing and stared at an intruder at 23 m (75 ft.), on average, and ran away when the person got to within about 19 m (62 ft.). The longest recorded flight distance at Songjiang was 150m (492 ft.), while that at Yancheng was nearly 180m (590 ft.), suggesting wild deer were significantly more skittish than free-range captive animals. Tian concluded that, as a direct approach did not alter the flight initiation distance for semi-captive water deer, humans were perceived as a non-lethal predator. He also noted that an anti-predator response is developed early (at around a week old) and that the deer appeared to risk assess prior to fleeing, running away sooner in open habitat than woodland and their distance varying according to their previous experience with humans, size of the area, population density, and the presence of fences.

I know of no equivalent data on water deer behavioural response to humans in Korea, but they do seem more likely to live in and around human habitation and I have seen YouTube and social media footage of what appear to be deer even in towns or cities in the south. In a 2011 paper to Landscape Ecology and Engineering, however, Baek-Jun Kim and colleagues reported that water deer were significantly less common in metropolitan areas with populations in excess of one million (67% of samples) than in rural areas (83% of samples). It is nonetheless my opinion that water deer have adapted to human presence to a greater degree in South Korea than elsewhere.