As PKL said Scotland in particular is attractive to Europeans our hill stalking is pretty unique.
Also UK Roe stalking is popular with Europeans especially Belgians which 99% of my clients are the reasons being Belgium is a small country with a large population 11 million in a very small country where a large portion of the population hunt stalking is hard to come by in Belgium, and like anything else its supply and demand, stalking a cull buck in Belgium can cost anything up to a £1000
Even with travel costs and accommodation its cheaper for a Belgian to hunt in the UK than at home.
People here think stalking is expensive, they don't realise how lucky we are.
Many Belgian groups are now taking leases in the UK in fact HVV the Belgian hunting organisation are now doing DMQ 1 and 2 after sending staff over here to train, this is because there was a demand from there members for it, I would suspect purely as its easier to get a stalking lease in the UK with DMQ
I think its avery good idea that Hunters from overseas should have some proof of thier ability, before they are let loose in our countryside,unfortunatly waving wads of cash seems to work better for them.
My mate inhereted some forgien stalkers when he took over a lease, they have been comming for many years and thier money covers a fair chunk of the lease,he was less than impressed when the first 3 bucks came into the larder,but was told that he would have to get used to it!!!
So they are coming over here just to shoot things that 'tick the box' in their hunting memoirs? Do we extend the welcome again to these people just for their money, because if anyone on this site posted photos like this of their shooting/gralloching skills they would be ripped to bits by the criticism.
Looks like the rats chewed the legs off the middle one in Nell's picture - I'm saying that and I'm sh'ite at taking the legs off deer!
Hopefully these are to be sold off to Butchers Choice for dog food? [/QUO
I thing the legs are the result of a bullet not someone trying to remove them, however going by the pics not very impressed, but anyone can make a bad shot, as I have said 99% of my clients are continentals, all I can say overall is that their shooting is no worse nor better than anyone else's.
Germany and the scandinavian coutries have mandatory shooting licensing, which take a lot of studying and practice to acheive. You are not able to buy a hunting rifle without it, so I think we are lucky on that count.
The photo of the lardered deer is unfortunate and we arn't given enough info to make a valid assessment, but given that UK stalkers are not required to take a test of skill or knowledge before shooting at deer, is there just the slightest chance that there might be more horrors going on out there than we would like to think.
I can recall some 25-30 years ago when I was still farming, that large numbers of roe were shotgunned on vermin drives and only the fact that the continentals came here and gave them a value and showed us "De Pirsch" that we stared to treat them as we should. When I started stalking roe i was the only person in the area that did and when I asked around for stalking my farmer neighbours would laugh and say get on with it. In germany at that time i suspect you could not find a farm that was not stalked, so that is why they are here, the pressure is no where near as high here as there.
Yeah, not very tidy... but how fast were they running at the time?