OK, to summarise following some previous posts, it seems that if deer stalking were to be banned, there could be a 30% rise in the deer population per year, which gives a doubling every 3 years. Perhaps calf/fawn mortality and harsh weather could play it’s part, so playing safe, say a doubling every 4 years.
That figure was generated by me and is an educated estimate based on the 6 species. Aside from harsh weather, we also need to consider muntjac with a heavy female sexual imbalance where does give birth every 7 months. Also multiple births from roe which regularly have triplets around here, and CWD which can have large litters.
The UK’s population is perhaps 2 million, (
http://www.thedeerinitiative.co.uk/about_wild_deer/) so it would be 4 million after 4 years, or c.12 million in a decade.
Clearly unsustainable, rapidly rising human deaths from road traffic accidents alone, around 20 per year currently, with 400-700 injuries and c.74000 deer related vehicle accidents increasing exponentially (
https://www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/wildlife/inthewild/deer) would bring an end to the ban, aside from the crop, tree and fencing damage. The general public would baulk at coming across dead or dying deer from RTAs (who would attend injured deer at the roadside?) or starvation or disease; surely TB would rise as a result of deer living together in ever closer proximity.
Introduction of Chronic Wasting Disease by some rogue forester would never surprise me, much the same as myxomatosis was manufactured and introduced to kill rabbits. New Zealand is surely a good case study where the deer have become so out of control that they are employing cullers to shoot and leave carcasses and now poisoning deer with 1080 poison?
So professional hunters are brought in at the start of the ban to stabilise the population.
Approx. 350 000 deer are culled yearly (Deer Initiative numbers again, also used by the BBC’s Countryfile and similar figures from the RSPCA), which will not do, as 30% of 2 000 000 is 600 000, just to stop the population growing.
Chasey suggests a professional may shoot 25 in a week, that’s 24000 weeks work, or 462 professional stalkers working 52 weeks, each shooting 25 every week of the year, not stopping for wet and stormy weather, high winds and fog to cull 600 000.
You also need to consider seasons! Culling female deer is the key to population control and we can only shoot them for limited times of the year. You may therefore need twice as many stalkers, but for only 6 months of the year? Night shooting would be the easiest way to be most effective.
Paid £250/day, that’s a £577 000 weekly bill for those 462 stalkers working a 5 day week, or £30 million a year. As employed workers, employers (i.e. taxpayers) will need to pay National Insurance, stalkers will be entitled to holidays, sick pay and pensions, of course. Then there would be monitors and surveyors, area managers, HR staff and of course health and safety personnel.
I would say £250/day would be a bit more than the going rate? Even then, the weekly wage would be £1250. 25 deer sold at £50 each would cover this cost, so it could effectively be self-sustaining?
Would £50 million cover it? I didn’t even mention carcase removal/disposal.
Carcass removal would generate funds rather than cost?
Problems of access would arise. Would all landowners agree to unknown population surveyors then stalkers, then follow up monitors being on their land? Would access be demanded whenever suits the contractors? Who will have keys to secure sites? How would compensation work for a job poorly done - perhaps the contractors do not get to your ground when needed and saplings are eaten or crops flattened? Would the law need changing to accommodate night shooting?
The current deer act and laws within England & Wales would quite simply not allow this. The law makers, by strange coincidence, are often landowners who would never allow this to happen! It's a good discussion, but far removed from reality, although there are undoubtedly a growing number of buffoons that would ban deer culling in an instant!
I cannot see it working, there are just too many problems.
But an exercise like this highlights the difficulties and, if put to the anti stalking community, how could they respond in a rational way? There is no real alternative. The only answer is stalking as we have it.
To some extent I'd agree, but there are some aspects that will need to change. Professional groups, general area management, and collaborative culls are on the increase and are proven to increase reduction of deer populations. The gap continues to widen between them and the recreational trophy hunter who preserves his breeding stock of females to only shoot trophy males for his own benefit! That sort of mentality damages deer populations and gives awful perception as to why we need to mange deer populations. If we are seen to be shooting deer in an attempt to replicate what nature would have intended if we still had apex predators, then we can justify what we do. But, if we are seen to be shooting deer for the benefit of ourselves, then we have no future.
(allegedly )
