Description
“The Rakaia red deer herd … is, without doubt, the greatest herd of red deer in New Zealand …. These were the animals descended from the deer imported from England by the North Canterbury Acclimatisation Society in 1897 and purchased from the then-famed pastoral parks of Stoke Park in Buckinghamshire.”
“The ancestors of these great stags from Stoke can be traced back to the wild indigenous red deer of Britain, of which the Highland red deer of Scotland is the only surviving remnant in any numbers. To these animals had been introduced red deer from several parts of Germany, and from this interbreeding developed a type of red deer that, when released in the mountains of the South Island of New Zealand, produced antlers far beyond the expectations of those who were responsible for their purchase.”
