Most of fallow deers in France are in small game ranches and they are not a real challenge to hunt. Very often, they still have tags on their ears because they came from a breeding place and they were transfered by truck juste before the hunt.
Of course, there are some free roaming populations of fallow deers (escaped from game ranch very often) across the country but for a foreigner, it's impossible to access to such territories or almost.
Except in the Illwald, along the German border, where you find the biggest populations of fallow deers in the wild, in other places, they want to erradicate them.
The most popular place for red deer hunting are the Pyrénées mountains and in some areas, you have almost an overpopulation of red deers. But with the Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease, I think the situation is turning on the wrong side ! I have hunted quite a bit in these mountains but now I will not return over there.
Trophies are not really big because all deers are descents from animals that were released in the 50's and that native from the Chambord game reserve. In comparison to animals from the central part of europe, these stags don't have very long and heavy antlers.
And we can also speak about the poor management in the past where biggest stags were killed in first. There are still big stags in the Pyrénées but definitely not common. And the last problem is the price that has incresed a lot the last years and it's not a fair system because the price is only about the number of tines on antlers and not the weight of the trophy.
