Shooting deer in a park....ethics

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Buckaroo8

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This year I have noticed a lot of adverts to take stags/bucks from parks, on SD and elsewhere. It seems that it is becoming a more popular option for people hoping to secure a big trophy animal. There must be many benefits to shooting a trophy from a park instead of taking one from the wild.
Some people say that shooting a fenced animal is not as sporting but as we all know, in some parts of the world it is very common to hunt within large fenced areas.
I think that this type of hunt will become much more popular here in the UK in the next ten years or so and might be considered more sensible than hunting trophy animals from the wild...............what do you think?
 
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I shoot farm animals tied to gates and with broken legs unable to escape!

To be fair if you pass the following 2 tests:

1. Will the method be humane
2. Is the shooting of the animal necessary?

Then no problem as far as I am concerned.
 
Not for sport, no. If these animals are going to be culled anyway then I can't see a problem. As I say - so long as it is done humanely.

Don't kid yourself it's wild deer stalking, but it's just as necessary in terms of the management of these animals.

I can't see myself buying that type of shooting, BUT I have no problem with it, and I don't see it as any sort of ethical issue.
 
What I was thinking was....maybe it is better to shoot trophies from parks.....they are infinitely replaceable, they are part of a carefully formulated management plan, the consequences of wounding a beast are potentially not as severe and there is less urgency for the hunter to take a shot, as he is guaranteed another go at some point if he screws up the stalk.
 
I can tell you having had to help in the selling of a Stag this year that on this occasion it was no easy task. The animal, although in a deer park was as near completely wild as you could get. He was cunning too. The stag would often take to middle of the herd. The stalker had to change high seats in order to get a shot and the Stag took nearly an hour to get into a shootable position. This obviously required a lot of patience by the stalker.
Depending on the park it may not be as easy as you think.
 
buck bones melton mowbray ,its at bouvray farm.dave stretton the man who wrote the DSC1 manual at donnington deer services ,islay walton near donnington race track.if buck bones doesnt answer he,s on pigeon watch as elk hunter .dave stretton looks after donnington deer park he,s got his own websiteas well DONNINGTON DEER SERVICES .andrew <buck bones >is on tinternet as http://www.the trophy barn .atb
 
It is deer shooting, no different from driven pheasant, just easier, the deer have to be culled, the fact that someone is willing to pay to shoot a deer in a high fenced field is there choice, we have had a buffalo in a field offered on this site, but it's not for me.
 
What I was thinking was....maybe it is better to shoot trophies from parks.....they are infinitely replaceable, they are part of a carefully formulated management plan, the consequences of wounding a beast are potentially not as severe and there is less urgency for the hunter to take a shot, as he is guaranteed another go at some point if he screws up the stalk.

Its a trophy animal but not a trophy memory I would imagine. Needs to be done, but not sure I could do it just for the head.
 
The stalker had to change high seats in order to get a shot and the Stag took nearly an hour to get into a shootable position. This obviously required a lot of patience by the stalker.

It took a whole hour, I have to drive four hours just to get to my stalking ground!

Having said that I have no problem with culling animals and if someone is prepared to pay for the pleasure then that's what make the world go round.

Cheers.
 
Not my cup of tea . But everyone to there own , I wonder if the tale of how they managed to cull such a good trophy ( shot out of Landrover window ) changes when showing off the mounted trophy to admirers ?


Chill
 
To look at it another way, almost all trophy deer are fenced to a degree, just not maybe with conventional fences. Roe are territorial so if you have access to ground with roe you can almost guarantee that the buck will be there somewhere. During the fallow rut the bucks will be at their stands so again kept fairly well in one place. Shooting a stag during the rut while he's so preoccupied he won't even eat seems hardly fair ;) Then you can go down the calling deer route? If you start on ethics it's a tough one to draw a line under as everyone has different opinions.

Everyone shoots for different reasons so who are each of us to criticise another? Someone may want a nice piece to decorate their wall at home and rather than pop to John Lewis and buy a trendy painting they fancy a day out with their rifle instead.
 
To look at it another way, almost all trophy deer are fenced to a degree, just not maybe with conventional fences. Roe are territorial so if you have access to ground with roe you can almost guarantee that the buck will be there somewhere. During the fallow rut the bucks will be at their stands so again kept fairly well in one place. Shooting a stag during the rut while he's so preoccupied he won't even eat seems hardly fair ;) Then you can go down the calling deer route? If you start on ethics it's a tough one to draw a line under as everyone has different opinions.

Everyone shoots for different reasons so who are each of us to criticise another? Someone may want a nice piece to decorate their wall at home and rather than pop to John Lewis and buy a trendy painting they fancy a day out with their rifle instead.

Absolutely agree.
There is a lot of stigma associated with park culling of trophy animals and yet it appears to me that maybe it is more ethical to shoot a trophy from a park than take one from the wild. A lot of stalkers report that they are seeing a decline in the number of wild, mature animals, Reds in particular, so it doesn't make sense to support the idea that trophy hunters should target them instead of park animals.
I think that given a large enough acreage, a "fenced in" hunt could be equally sporting to a wild hunt, especially for the smaller territorial species, as mentioned above.
I am not talking about the so called "canned hunting" where animals are shot in miniature paddocks, I am thinking of hundreds to thousands of acres fenced in.
I think it's about time we (British stalkers) re-thought park hunting and supported the principle more.
In France there are some fair sized parks filled with boar, shot during driven hunts.......... the shots presented are likely to be equally sporting and wounded animals are contained and dispatched more quickly than they would be in the wild. What's not to like about that?
 
Absolutely agree.
There is a lot of stigma associated with park culling of trophy animals and yet it appears to me that maybe it is more ethical to shoot a trophy from a park than take one from the wild. A lot of stalkers report that they are seeing a decline in the number of wild, mature animals, Reds in particular, so it doesn't make sense to support the idea that trophy hunters should target them instead of park animals.
I think that given a large enough acreage, a "fenced in" hunt could be equally sporting to a wild hunt, especially for the smaller territorial species, as mentioned above.
I am not talking about the so called "canned hunting" where animals are shot in miniature paddocks, I am thinking of hundreds to thousands of acres fenced in.
I think it's about time we (British stalkers) re-thought park hunting and supported the principle more.
In France there are some fair sized parks filled with boar, shot during driven hunts.......... the shots presented are likely to be equally sporting and wounded animals are contained and dispatched more quickly than they would be in the wild. What's not to like about that?

Lots of sense being talked here instead of the usual “that aint stalking” attitude.
 
Lots of sense being talked here instead of the usual “that aint stalking” attitude.

Its not for everyone but if people are willing to pay for then good luck to them.
to suggest it aint stalking my be true but it aint as easy as some would think picking the right animal in a group then getting a safe shot of the chosen one without shooting others can be a real test .
once I was sent out to shoot a sheep in a 400acre area in Scotland it took nearly 4 Hours to get it and me into the right place a very memorable stalking session, yet I have been out for roe and shot one in the first 10minutes.
 
It makes me laugh when people talk about how easy park deer are. Question I have to ask is have any of them ever shot park deer?
Park deer have seen park managers come in year after year and cull. They know the score. You may get lucky and pick off 5 or 6 before they cotton on that your back again and then they close ranks and move around in a big herd. You can't close them in a small paddock as 7 ft fencing will not stop them if they are really pushed and then you have escapees to deal with. Never mind the casualties if you've still got the prickets with their mothers.
Perhaps they could be hand fed and then come the day we can just get the megaphone out and call " come in no.24, your time is up! ". That is if you have time to hand feed over 100 deer.
 
When I did my DSC1 at Eridge Park the area that was fenced in was probably about 10 times larger than any of the places I stalk without fences.
 
It makes me laugh when people talk about how easy park deer are.

Having done some of my DSC2 stalks in a park I entirely agree, in my experience they are every bit as difficult to stalk as unenclosed deer.

In respect of shooting a "Trophy " animal, this isn't a priority for me, I'd far rather have a freezer full of venison, but for those that do wish to stalk one and are not financially replete then why not?

If the animal has to be culled at least it opens up the opportunity for many stalkers to achieve what might otherwise be out of reach.

atb Tim
 
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Some of the "pleasure " in park culling is getting the job done as quickly ,safely and as stress free for the deer as possible .often a shot is taken before the deer know what we're there to do initially this is almost like a stalk then and after that it is a totally different ball game from wild stalking but none the less satisfying when done right .
I've been lucky to have had a good teacher for both the wild and park culling
norma
 
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