Rutting Season

The toxic masculinity
Of rutting stags in Richmond Park
Is not an accusation
That could be levelled at this hart

Who whiles away these autumn days
(My fallen antlers nests for birds)
Reading about English hinds
Being mounted by foreign herds.

— September 2025

• • • • •

Richmond Park is a royal park and nature reserve in South-West London. Known for its herds of red and fallow deer, rutting season is between late September, when I visited, and early November. Police-recorded offences for rape in England and Wales have increased from 16,374 offences in 2012/13 to 71,667 in 2024/25, the highest rate per capita of any developed country in the world. Across the UK, in the year to March 2022, 798,000 women aged 16 and over reported a sexual assault or rape. In 2023, more than 8,800 rapes were reported to London’s Metropolitan Police Service, a rate of one reported rape every hour of every day of the year in our capital city, with a further 11,000 reports of other sexual violence. Between 2021 and 2023, 23 percent of sexual offences, including rape, were committed by foreign nationals, two-and-a-half times their percentage of the UK population.