The area thus defined, however, includes not only Exmoor but the Brendon and Quantock Hills east of it.
Large tracts are still uncultivated; and the wild red deer and native Exmoor pony are characteristic of the district.
Exmoor is noted for its stag hunting.
In The Chase of the Wild Red Deer, Mr Collyns says that the earliest record of a pack of staghounds in the Exmoor district is in 1598, when Hugh Polland, Queen Elizabeth's ranger, kept one at Simonsbath.
The succeeding rangers of Exmoor forest kept up the pack until some 200 years ago, the hounds subsequently passing into the possession of Mr Walter of Stevenstone, an ancestor of the Rolle family.