Environment and diet
Fields and groves
The red deer prefers terrain with a mixture of open spaces, tree groves and forest, along with damp areas and mud-puddles to bathe in. The deer graze in the open areas at night.
Diet
Important foods are berry bushes, heather and grass, as well as the leaves, shoots and buds of trees, preferably ash, rowan and willow. Red deer can cause damage by grazing on the bark of spruce trees or on field crops.
Intentsive hunt
The red deer wandered into Sweden after the retreat of the last ice-age glacier some 10,000 years ago. They spread out over an area that reached as far north as the Lake Mälaren region near present-day Stockholm. As a result of intensive hunting during the 19th century, there were only about fifty red deer remaining in Sweden at the start of the 20th century, located in the southernmost province of Skåne.
