A deer is a ruminant mammal belonging to the family Cervidae. A number of broadly similar animals, from related families within the order Artiodactyla, are often also called deer.
Names
Depending on their species, male deer are called stags, harts, bucks or bulls, and females are called hinds, does or cows. Young deer are called fawns or calves. Hart is an expression for a stag, particularly a Red Deer stag past its fifth year. It is not commonly used, but Shakespeare makes several references, punning the sound alike "hart" and "heart" for example in Twelfth Night. "The White Hart" and "The Red Hart" are common English pub names.
The adjective of relation pertaining to deer is cervine.
Habitat
Deer are widely distributed, and hunted, with indigenous representatives in all continents except Antarctica and Australia. Deer live in a variety of biomes ranging from tundra to the tropical rainforest. While often associated with forests, many deer are ecotone species that live in transitional areas between forests and thickets (for cover) and prairie and savanna (open space). The majority of large deer species inhabit temperate mixed deciduous forest, mountain mixed coniferous forest, tropical seasonal/dry forest, and savanna habitats around the world. Clearing open areas within forests to some extent may actually benefit deer populations by exposing the understory and allowing the types of grasses, weeds, and herbs to grow that deer like to eat. However, adequate forest or brush cover must still be provided for populations to grow and thrive.
Economic significance
Deer have long had economic significance to humans. Deer meat, for which they are hunted and farmed, is called venison.
Musk, which comes from the gland on the abdomen of musk deer, is used in medicines and perfumes. Deerskin is used for shoes, boots, and gloves, and antlers are made into buttons and knife handles. The Saami of Scandinavia and the Kola Peninsula of Russia and other nomadic peoples of northern Asia used reindeer for food, clothing, and transport. The caribou is not domesticated or herded as is the case in Europe but is important to the Inuit. Most commercial venison in the United States is imported from New Zealand. Deer were originally brought to New Zealand by European settlers, and the deer population rose rapidly. This caused great environmental damage and was controlled by hunting and poisoning until the concept of deer farming developed in the 1960s. Deer farms in New Zealand number more than 3,500, with more than 400,000 deer in all.
In heraldry
Deer are represented in heraldry by the stag or hart (or less often by the hind). Stag's heads and antlers also appear as charges.
Examples can be found in the arms of Hertfordshire and its county town of Hertford, both examples of canting arms (a heraldic pun).
Several Norwegian municipalities have a stag or stag's head in their arms: Gjemnes, Hitra, Hjartdal and Voss.
Literature
The book Fire Bringer is a fiction book that is about a young fawn who is born and goes on a quest to save the deer kind who are called the Herla in the novel.
In Christmas lore (such as in the narrative poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas"), reindeer are often depicted pulling the sleigh of Santa Claus.
One famous fictional deer is Bambi. In the Disney film Bambi, he is a white-tailed deer, while in Felix Salten's original book Bambi, A Life in the Woods, he is a roe deer.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning 1938 novel The Yearling, written by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, was about a boy's relationship with a baby deer, later adapted to a children's film that was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture.
Saint Hubertus saw a stag with a crucifix between its antlers while hunting on Good Friday and was converted to Christianity by the vision.
In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the Patronus Charm that Harry Potter conjures up to scare away the Dementors is a silver stag. James Potter, Harry's father, had an Animagus form as a stag.
In one of the stories of Baron Munchhausen, the baron encounters a stag while eating cherries and without ammunition, fires the cherry-pits at the stag with his musket, but it escapes. The next year, the baron encounters a stag with a cherry tree growing from its head; presumably this is the animal he had shot at the previous year.
A Samurai warrior named Honda Tadakatsu famously adorned deer antlers on his helmet.
Deer have been a subject in Chinese paintings numerous times as a tranquility symbol.
In The Animals of Farthing Wood, a deer called The Great White Stag is the leader of all the animal residents of the nature reserve White Deer Park.
In The Queen, a 14 point "Imperial" stag plays a role in the film.
