This is an image of an Elk, if you live in Europe – or a Moose if you’re a resident of North America. It was drawn in pen-and-ink and colour-pencil in 1982. I used an image in a Collins paperback called The Wildlife of Europe and North America for reference and while paying attention to the exact detail of the original, rendered the illustration in my own style.

The Elk or Moose, is a ruminant member of the Mammalian order Artiodactyl [two-toed hooves] It is placed in the Family, Cervidae, commonly known as Deer and as a browsing herbivore tends to habituate woodlands for the foliage and also the cover that the trees and shrubs provide.

Male deer of all species, apart from the Chinese water deer and female reindeer, grow and shed new antlers each year, thereby differing from such permanently horned animals as antelope, which are in the same order as deer and may be superficially similar.

Dave Draper, May 2014

Beneath the featured image I have set a slideshow displaying the six species of deer in Great Britain. They are copied from the British Deer Society’s website. The other two images following them are of a Red Deer Stag rutting and a European Elk. The Elk is the only photo amongst this collection large enough to make good viewing. All the other images require zoom facilities to compare.

Dave Draper, October 2014

The British Deer Society

Of the six free living species of deer in great Britain only the Red deer and Roe deer are truly native to this country and even their populations have, over the years, been heavily ‘subsidised’ by introductions from elsewhere. All the other British species are completely ‘exotic’, with the Fallow deer almost certainly brought to this country by the Normans, and three Asiatic species, Reeve’s muntjac, Chinese water deer and sika deer, originally introduced towards the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.

Copyright © 2014 The British Deer Society

Beneath the Featured Image I have set a Slideshow as follows:

Estonian Elk
Rutting Red Deer Stag
Roe Deer
Red Deer
Fallow Deer
Chinese Water Deer
Reeves Muntjac
Sika Deer

Dave Draper, October 2014