The days of running trophy shooting as a business are over

Tackleberry270

Well-Known Member
The days of running trophy shooting as a business are coming to an end due to,

1. The change of approach to land management and the increased price of timber
2. Populations having to be kept low as a result and small numbers of trophy animals
3. financially not viable unless you have 20,000 acres or more

I would be interested to hear the opinion of folks who are in the industry?
 
never shot trophys, and if you are a deer manager it should not be your first consideration, as good heads have very little to do with the standard of deer or its management:stir:
 
surely the two run hand in hand in these modern times trophy animals /cull animals are all factored into a well thought out managment plan ,obviously getting animals to a trophy standard may take some time and i see where you are coming from but the revenue from trophy stock cannot be scoffed at, how long does it take for a hard wood tree to mature compared to a say a trophy red deer ,so 6 trophy red deer/yr may well contribute financially to the cost of a full time deer manager on 20,000 acres ,interesting stuff and i am not in the industry just a recreational stalker looking in on mainly lowland stalking .
regards
norma
 
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Norma i can see where your coming from on say a large scottish estate, i was thinking on more of a southern size estate, where some people purchase the sporting rights on deer, so they can sell the good heads, and ignore the rest. This is not aimed at the original poster in anyway at all.
 
You can make a tidy living on muntie stalking on 500 acres of good woodland looked after right in the right area. You can make even more money by doing a fenced in job and charging stupid money for old park beasts of mixed species that can be bought for a sensible price and shot for a stupid prices.
 
You can make a tidy living on muntie stalking on 500 acres of good woodland looked after right in the right area. You can make even more money by doing a fenced in job and charging stupid money for old park beasts of mixed species that can be bought for a sensible price and shot for a stupid prices.

Interesting business plan. How often are you going to stalk this 500 acres? How much will you charge per outing? How many muntjac do you expect to shoot? Will guests keep coming back if you keep taking them to the same ground? What do you call a tidy living? I think the national average income is around £35k. Where can you buy these old park deer? How will you capture/transport them?

Going back to the original question, I think that deer management in the UK has changed dramatically over the last few years and I think that it is very difficult to balance management for trophies and, what we as stalkers consider to be best practice especially where fallow and muntjac are concerned. With roe it is a little easier but one thing is for certain, you must have the support of the landowner or senior manager and all the other elements on the land such as farms, shoots, forestry etc must be reading from the same sheet.

Glyn.
 
I didn't want to restrict the debate too much but my interest is mainly concerning Roe deer where the landowner has enough land to warrant employing a deer manager and whether they can justify thier wage (ie, cover it and make the landowner money) when that is offset against the damage to forestry/crops.

Also if you are taking clients out and they are seeing 'good' animals but you are saving them to mature into potential trophys then you risk your reputation no matter how justified you are.
 
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Another way to look at it is that a stalking business should break even on cull beasts, trophies are a bonus and can't be budgeted for due to variations in weather year to year and if other areas shoot trophy beasts when off your ground (species relevant). Most land owners won't allow deer managers to manage muntjac for trophies in the same way for the other species. I agree with Glyn, consistent management depends on estate/land wide cooperation.

Ys

Chris
 
Norma i can see where your coming from on say a large scottish estate, i was thinking on more of a southern size estate, where some people purchase the sporting rights on deer, so they can sell the good heads, and ignore the rest. This is not aimed at the original poster in anyway at all.
got you ! i was more going down the road of an estate owner would certainly not turn down the chance of offsetting some of the cost of his employees salary by offering cull beasts and some trophy heads to paying stalkers ,funny thing i have been asked by an estate owner if i would like to shoot a roe buck or two in scotland after the guy who leases the stalking has shot the trophy animals ...he isnt bothered with the cull animals ....his loss my gain :D.
 
How many estates can afford to pay for a full time wild deer manager. Its a heck of alot of deer to cull, trophies included, to cover the costs of employing someone fulltime ?
 
Your right there 6 pointer , I was shown some roe and fallow that were trophy heads so they were told, I have cut up better heads for sticks.
 
Consistent trophies are a by-product of good roe deer management,if you are greedy your roe suffer and so do you because the trophy quality will decline
If you don't shoot enough does trophy quality can also decline
 
In my experience if forestry is seen as the paymaster and the forester has the upper hand (the ear of the factor/manager) there is no way he will stand to see ANY deer on the land.

I used to get little cryptic maps in biro with "X" marking the spot where he had seen a roe - seemed to expect me to go back, find it still there and pop it!

I would say if the "management" regime is "shoot everything" and after a while you struggle to find any deer then there is little hope for a trophy.
 
Not sure it is over, we are probably going to loose some ground after a well known sporting agent has been camped out in the forest office increasing his offer week on week. Money talks, and he will offer a huge lease payment shoot the good stags and bucks and leave everything else. deer will run rampage and he will get shown the door in four or five years. Round these parts money talks regrdless of management plans and only when things get out of hand does a sensible lease and propoer cull figures get accepted again
 
Ali N who is the well known agent waiting with money and may i say if he is going to pay big bucks the stags and buck trophies must be there.Well i certainly wouldn't leave them for some one else, ps round every were money talks. They would just love us to believe its about the management
I have had many trophies of my grounds and all were because of good management golds silver and bronzes none were ever sold on. The forestry areas were i live have never produced a decent head. IN MY BOOK A TROPHY NEEDS TO BE PLUS 400 GRM OR ABOVE 9 INCH OR BOTH:oops:
 
on decent ground with the co-operation of the farming/forestry interests, it is reletively easy if you put the work into the habitat,&nbsp;to manage/ produce an annual crop of trophy roe buck. On less than perfect ground it can still de done with feeding stations and mineral supplements and manipulation of the available vegetation.<BR>To do this on a scale so as to generate a sole income would be pretty tough i think.<BR><BR>Open range red deer are a different proposition, even a large estate may not contain all the home range for both stags and hinds so any drive to improve quality can be seriously damaged by nieghbours with differing objectives. Unless you have the luxury of being completely free of financial pressures ,there is a tendency in much of the current management to take a larger proportion of better stags while ignoring nobbers and poorer heads because clients dont want to pay for them. Many forests have a prodominance of 6 and 7 pointers that are by passed as being young, &nbsp;but &nbsp;are weak in form and have no real potential to improve. <BR><BR>Enclosed parks can produce significant numbers of trophy worthy animals with effort put into shelter breeding and feeding but to do this on a landscape scale that gives a good stalking experience would require a lot of dedication of time and resources and must be a marginal return for volume and quality of the land required.<BR>
 
Good deer management is the key, plus the area needs to be of a size that supports the deer and the clients you may potentially have. If you manage your ground sensibly you should with luck be able to keep both clients, landowner and yourself happy.
 
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