Giant stag becomes legend

It sounded like a late-evening pub story: the Moral Tale of the Free Life and Ignominious Death of the Greatest Wild Animal in Britain.

The "Emperor" of Exmoor, a 150kg red stag reputedly standing 2.7m tall, had been gunned down in its prime by an evil trophy-hunting banker who had been tipped off by a greedy landowner.

Britain was agog. The BBC reported that the Emperor had been found dead. There was to be a police inquiry, wildlife film presenters and veteran West Country rock stars were consulted by the Mail and Telegraph, and irate animal lovers were set against defensive stag hunters. The nation mourned, political cartoonists used the story to illustrate the welfare cuts and MPs whipped themselves into a furore.

The story of the Emperor's death was repeated from India to South Africa. But the closer anyone looked at the details, the more threadbare the evidence became.

Er, there was no body. No one had seen the Emperor's severed head, or indeed its legs or hoofs; no one could testify where, or even when, the shooting had taken place.

Farmers swore it hadn't been shot on their land. Its name had been cannily made up by a veteran press photographer with an eye for a good story - and who handily had the last pictures taken of the animal.

Indeed, the only evidence for the Emperor's death was circumstantial: an unidentified member of the British Deer Society had claimed that a group of unnamed people had supposedly heard shots and were said to have seen an animal being loaded on to a vehicle and taken away; and a "lady landowner" claimed she used to see the animal on her estate but hadn't for some time. No one came forward when the deer society called on its observant member to identify himself.

The story then performed what is known in the newspaper trade as a "reverse ferret".

"Mystery deepens!" cried the Mail. "He's alive!" claimed the Telegraph - with just as little evidence as it had for its death.

The great beast had reportedly been spotted near Winsford, then seen in someone's back garden and on farmland.

The consensus was that it was all "a myth", a story invented by locals who wanted to protect the stag. Of course, no local would say that they had invented the story either.

It emerged that the Emperor - if indeed he ever existed - was by no means the largest wild animal, or even stag, in Britain, and that 74,000 deer are hit every year by cars.

It is tempting to place the Emperor in the menagerie of legendary beasts like the Hound of the Baskervilles, the Beast of Bodmin, the black dogs of the Quantocks, the Loch Ness monster and the Surrey Puma.

But Britain's legendary animals are usually fearsome and the stories illustrate our innermost dread of the wild, whereas the Emperor is portrayed as a wise giant living among inconsequential but protective men, and the guilt has been attributed to whoever shot him.

The story echoes Theseus and the Minotaur, Beauty and the Beast or Who killed Cock Robin? The only certainty is that it will be told in the West Country for years.

- OBSERVER