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Encounter With A Mythological Beast (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Chad


In: Ramsbottom
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What you have very cleverly done Mick (maybe unconsciously) is to cite various oddball phenomena -- Exmoor Beast... Crop Circles... Beast of Bodmin... even Alien Abduction -- melded them all together (and while nobody was watching) slipped in white deer sightings, as if they were somehow equally unlikely and could thus be deposited into the same syndrome of self delusion.

Having done this you then moved the argument on, into an area which you knew you couldn't lose... Even I agreed with your analysis of the syndrome in general.

However, all your fancy footwork doesn't hide the fact that you have failed utterly to justify the inclusion of white deer sightings into your quirky little assemblage. - - All the other members of the pack involve weird unexpected phenomena which require some form of explanation... white deer sightings on the other hand require no explanation, they are simply sightings of an uncommon but perfectly natural recessive colour variety of a very common animal.

If fact I've come to the conclusion that white deer are actually far more common in some isolated populations than I imagined. I started to come to this conclusion when I read the reports of the two cases I cited earlier.

Both were of sightings along the same stretch of road on which I had had my encounter (the A814 from Arrochar to Helensburgh) -- the first (from a local, in response to the video of the white stag) took the tone: "What's the big deal, we have loads of them around these parts"-- the second was astonishingly similar to mine, both in location and the reaction of the observer, even though they happened quite independently and without knowledge of each other.

The local geography (Loch Long to the left, Loch Lomond to the right, a bottleneck at Arrochar in the north and less suitable countryside for deer in the south) isolates the local deer population quite nicely.

Now from my own experience of breeding budgerigars, in a colony system, I know how recessive genotypes can over time become the dominant phenotype, through differential reproduction... and budgies only tend to mate in pairs.

Deer, on the other hand, have a dominant stag. If a perfectly normal looking red deer carrying the leucistic gene happens to become the dominant male, after a couple of generations white deer will crop up with amazing regularity... In North America some populations are up to 40% white.

So, if they are so common, why are there so few sightings reported in the media?

I have my ideas... what do you think?
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nemesis8


In: byrhfunt
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Chad wrote:

So, if they are so common, why are there so few sightings reported in the media? I have my ideas... what do you think?

Hmm, well in my limited experience, deer in general are timid camera-shy fellows, difficult to get a picture, ....the limited sightings of white fallows appear to often report a tame deer. So I would guess that the odd one or two have escaped from a farm, also the Scottish ALF have had a campaign against a deer farm, so an organised break in and release is not an impossibility. I am not sure I buy into this "wild deer " thesis. Cynical or what?
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Chad


In: Ramsbottom
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Looks like my hunch was right... Here are three more independent accounts of white deer just to the south of Arrochar. These are from the Loch Lomond side. (Apparently going back to medieval times).

"...we suddenly spotted what we thought to be a deer and a white goat standing together deep in the woods. On the way over on the boat, someone had mentioned that a white goat had been spotted previously. One of our ramblers, however, had powerful binoculars with him and assured us that it was actually a white deer, a most unusual occurrence in the Scottish deer population though an article by Michael Baxter Brown in Deer, Vol 12, No. 7, 2003 discusses the existence of such deer in medieval times. The normal deer bounded off but the white one stayed to stare at us. We watched it for several minutes before it, too, bounded off in the opposite direction with typical deer-like gait."


"The next morning we awoke to a mist that had turned the loch into a mystical yet exciting feeling place (apologies for the poor description but it was indescribable). After a brew I decided to go for a wonder alone to collect some wood and just for a wonder I was walking through the woods and it was misty and silent then out of no where about 15 yards from me I saw something move and upon focusing I saw a large white stag who just stared straight back at me for a minute. This was a moment I will never forget for as long as I live..."


"There are actually quite a lot of white deer in that area for some reason. I am sure I have a picture somewhere."


And no Mick... these are not simply more examples of Beast of Exmin Syndrome... that can only occur once the media start publicising these sightings and they enter into the public's imagination.

Then and only then can you add white deer sightings as a true variant of your syndrome. (And you had better kill off all the real ones...just to make sure.)
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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All the other members of the pack involve weird unexpected phenomena which require some form of explanation... white deer sightings on the other hand require no explanation, they are simply sightings of an uncommon but perfectly natural recessive colour variety of a very common animal.

Quite so. Having been taught that white deer are a mystical Celtic beast, if I came across one my brain would inform me that I'd seen a sheep, or maybe a goat seeing as how I can't tell 'em apart. (Sarsen stones are called 'grey wethers' because they were mistaken for sheep, not that they really resemble sheep apart from being grey-ish).
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Chad


In: Ramsbottom
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Quite so. Having been taught that white deer are a mystical Celtic beast, if I came across one my brain would inform me that I'd seen a sheep.


I hadn't actually thought of that Hatty, but you are dead right... if the one I spotted had moved off before I got a proper look at it, it would have gone down (probably with countless others) as a closely shorn sheep, without a second thought.

You're a genius Hatty... you have solved the whole thing... we are actually dealing with the exact opposite of Bodmoor Beast Syndrome...people see something unusual but the brain interprets it as something familiar... hence massive under reporting.

I've changed my mind. Not only do I want you back on my side... I'd vote for you as Prime Minister!
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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No-one's ever been so complimentary to me before, Chad, quite an uplifting experience almost on a par with seeing an exotic creature (I somehow get the feeling I won't get used to it). Whiteness is evidently an undesirable trait, from a deer's point of view, but presumably in medieval hunting circles it was specially prized. I wonder why we don't hear of sightings from Wales and Ireland, famous for Celtic-y folklore and tall stories; they may have got rid of their native deer populations as too competitive or maybe they don't believe the evidence of their own eyes.
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nemesis8


In: byrhfunt
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My money is it being a pale or possibly white fallow escaped from a farm on estate. This is not the beast of myth, the ancient red, it is a Norman import. Still a good spot though.

Was your dinner from the night before described as "local" or "organic"?
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nemesis8


In: byrhfunt
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http://www.dunsfold.org/whitefallowdeer.pdf



Do these look familiar?
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Chad


In: Ramsbottom
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You could well be right Nem. Although there are no herds of white deer kept in that area today, these could easily be feral descendents of that 16th century Stirling herd... Stirling's only thirty odd miles away.

And while I would back myself to differentiate between a deer and a sheep, I couldn't have the same confidence between two species of deer... especially when the individual in question happens to be a funny colour.

My dinner by the way was described as "Local Hill Venison".
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nemesis8


In: byrhfunt
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Chad wrote:

My dinner by the way was described as "Local Hill Venison".


"Fillet of feral"?

"Beast of Bodmin Delight"?
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Chad


In: Ramsbottom
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I suppose this is a good time to tell you about a previous encounter I had many years ago, with another very rare beast that featured in the mythology of many cultures--the Golden Eagle.

I was returning from my first trip to Lochgoil and, as I was driving along the mountain road down Glen Croe, I spotted three large raptors soaring above Ben Arthur. (That's a mountain, by the way...not a bloke.) I stopped the car to get a better look and then after a while drove on, contented that I had seen my first wild eagles.

An hour and a half or so later, I called in at our regional office (just south of Glasgow) and excitedly told my colleagues what I had seen. After a little ridicule I accepted their explanation that there were no eagles that far south and what I had seen were in fact buzzards.

A couple of years later, on one of many subsequent visit to Lochgoil I again saw a couple of raptors soaring above the same mountains. This time I kept it to myself, but as soon as I got home I visited the library (this was in the days before the internet) and confirmed to myself that I was right all along and these were indeed Golden Eagles.

Now I've been visiting that part of Scotland two or three times a year (on business and pleasure) ever since, but I have never spotted eagles there again (though I have seen a few buzzards).

Then about three years ago, as I reached the top of the pass, at 'Rest And Be Thankful', I noticed a lot of hi-tech activity going on, on the slopes above me. I pulled up at the side of the road behind their support vehicle and got chatting to the two guys inside.

They were in fact installing observation cameras for the Forestry Commission... and you can now watch Golden Eagles nesting in Glen Croe, on monitors in the visitors centre at Ardgarten, at the bottom of the glen. They confirmed that the eagles had been there for many years.

You can perhaps now understand why I refused to believe I could have been wrong about seeing a white deer.
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nemesis8


In: byrhfunt
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This is from Rossdhu house near Loch Lomond.

Of special interest are the score of pure white fallow deer which, together with roe deer and the more usual fallow deer, spend the summer months in the Park. They are all wild and therefore seldom seen. Most of them spend the winter on the islands in the Loch and swim to the mainland when summer visitors arrive on the islands.

So, unless my directions are wrong (quite possible), the white fallow deer live on the islands in the loch, and then swim over. Was this close to where you were driving, or am I in the wrong part of Scotland?
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Chad


In: Ramsbottom
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Rossdhu House is the home of the beautiful Loch Lomond golf course on the west shore of the loch, just facing the islands referred to. The one I spotted was only about 6 miles away (as our friend the crow flies) on the shore of Loch Long. But to get from one location to the other would require crossing a very busy dual carriage and scaling some pretty mountainous terrain... so while undoubtedly related I suspect mine wasn't one of the score mentioned.

The fact that they are happy to take to the water though is very interesting.

After a bit of research I'm now pretty sure that they are indeed remnants of that 16th century Stirling herd referred to by Michael Baxter Brown. That herd, I'm sure, would have been located in Queen Elizabeth Forest in the Trossachs, between Stirling and Loch Lomond. Anybody who knows the Trossachs will know how the beautiful and much less rugged countryside (when compared to the Highlands) provides ideal hunting terrain... particularly on horseback. Once that herd stopped being artificially managed and were left to go feral, any white individuals would have shone like beacons and been rapidly hunted to extinction.

Those however, who made it across Loch Lomond and took up residence between there and Loch Long would have fared much better. This is heavily wooded Highland country and the terrain makes even hunting on foot difficult... and on horseback impossible. And since their only other predator, the wolf, was made extinct, white individuals in that population would not have suffered the same fate as their Trossach cousins.

I do find it rather ironic though, that my White Hart was probably not the stuff of ancient legend but rather the descendent of a 16th century Tudor forgery. Now why, I wonder, does that sound so familiar?
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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What you have very cleverly done Mick (maybe unconsciously) is to cite various oddball phenomena... Exmoor Beast... Crop Circles... Beast of Bodmin... even Alien Abduction... melded them all together (and while nobody was watching) slipped in white deer sightings, as if they were somehow equally unlikely and could thus be deposited into the same syndrome of self delusion.

I thought I did it quite openly. The general point is that relying on our own personal experience or others' eye-witness testimony may lead to the spurious reporting of unusual phenomena.

However, all your fancy footwork doesn't hide the fact that you have failed utterly to justify the inclusion of white deer sightings into your quirky little assemblage. - - All the other members of the pack involve weird unexpected phenomena which require some form of explanation... white deer sightings on the other hand require no explanation, they are simply sightings of an uncommon but perfectly natural recessive colour variety of a very common animal.

This is perfectly true but the syndrome itself must, pretty much by definition, arrive at this point. We don't at present have a way of knowing when an 'impossible' sighting is being made and a merely rare one being incorrectly reported. After all feral pumas on Exmoor (or even alien visitations) are not impossible in themselves. We have merely decided that they are in this context.

In fact I've come to the conclusion that white deer are actually far more common in some isolated populations than I imagined. I started to come to this conclusion when I read the reports of the two cases I cited earlier.

You have unerringly isolated the central problem. Reports and sightings clearly feed off each other but how are we to tell whether this arises out of BodminBeast Syndrome or to the fact that more people have been alerted to, are looking for and reporting back a real phenomenon?

Both were of sightings along the same stretch of road on which I had had my encounter (the A814 from Arrochar to Helensburgh) -- the first (from a local, in response to the video of the white stag) took the tone: "What's the big deal, we have loads of them around these parts"-- the second was astonishingly similar to mine, both in location and the reaction of the observer, even though they happened quite independently and without knowledge of each other.

Yes, this could be good evidence. On the other hand the coincidence might arise from the fact that you were being newly selective in looking for confirmatory evidence. The internet has tremendously increased the likelihood of such concordances.
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Chad


In: Ramsbottom
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We don't at present have a way of knowing when an 'impossible' sighting is being made and a merely rare one being incorrectly reported.

Don't forget, there is also the possibility that it is a merely rare one being correctly reported.

You have unerringly isolated the central problem. Reports and sightings clearly feed off each other but how are we to tell whether this arises out of BodminBeast Syndrome or to the fact that more people have been alerted to, are looking for and reporting back a real phenomenon?

This really is the crux of the issue. What you say here is absolutely true, but such sightings can only feed off each other if the people making the sightings are aware of other similar sightings being made.

The rash of Big Cat sightings and before that Loch Ness Monster sightings all occurred after the media had made them sexy. They had entered the public imagination and people were primed to see them... spot something unusual and they immediately spring to mind. Even more sightings then get reported and the situation escalates until the media eventually gets bored... and then sightings decline.

But white deer sightings?... had you come across any sexy reports in the media (or any reports for that matter) before I mentioned my sighting? I certainly hadn't... so what was my sighting feeding off?

As Hatty so rightly pointed out... if the brain isn't expecting to see a white deer it will see a sheep (or a goat) ... just as mine did (until I got a better look at it)... It simply wasn't primed to see a white deer. As I said earlier this is exactly the opposite effect to what you get with Bodmin Beast Syndrome and genuine white deer sightings will go unnoticed and unreported.

If however, at some point (on a quiet news day) the media decide to make white deer sightings sexy and bring them to the general public's attention... get ready for a rash of reported sightings and then you can add them to your list of syndrome variants.

But until that time they simply do not fulfil the necessary pre-requisites for inclusion.
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