Where do you stand in regards to Hind Stalking Late?

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Tulloch

Tulloch

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As the seasons are now over and have been for a little while, I have heard a lot of discussions in regards to shooting Hinds right up to the last minute and Does right to the end of March and in fact most of my personal deer grounds have licenses on them and allow me to shoot All female species to the end of March and many are very adverse to that.

Where do you stand?

I understand 100% why guys don't like it, I get it, but to say you don't like it because the deer are pregnant but that makes NO sense to me as arguably from the start of the season til the end of the season both hinds and Does are pregnant, so, in my head, if you do not like shooting pregnant deer then do not shoot female deer at all.

Shooting hind no matter recreation-ally or not IS actually deer control, arguably, shooting male deer is NOT it is more about condition and trophy selection.

Whats your thoughts? I personally am not a huge fan of shooting hinds late in the season even though I have to and I know it has to be done. But that is more to do with struggling to see a fully formed infant and nothign to do with it actually being pregnant, but again it has to be done on occasion.
 
No problem with shooting pregnant does at all. Pretty lucky as they’re pregnant for the whole doe season anyway......

Yes the foetus are more developed the later it is in the season but suppose im more of a ‘life begins at conception’ man myself so stage of development doesn’t make much of a difference to me ethically speaking
 
Tulloch said:
As the seasons are now over and have been for a little while, I have heard a lot of discussions in regards to shooting Hinds right up to the last minute and Does right to the end of March and in fact most of my personal deer grounds have licenses on them and allow me to shoot All female species to the end of March and many are very adverse to that.

Where do you stand?

I understand 100% why guys don't like it, I get it, but to say you don't like it because the deer are pregnant but that makes NO sense to me as arguably from the start of the season til the end of the season both hinds and Does are pregnant, so, in my head, if you do not like shooting pregnant deer then do not shoot female deer at all.

Shooting hind no matter recreation-ally or not IS actually deer control, arguably, shooting male deer is NOT it is more about condition and trophy selection.

Whats your thoughts? I personally am not a huge fan of shooting hinds late in the season even though I have to and I know it has to be done. But that is more to do with struggling to see a fully formed infant and nothign to do with it actually being pregnant, but again it has to be done on occasion.
Click to expand...
I’ve been culling deer against cull plans for 20 years. In the early days the teaching was around a census leading to a cull that left a herd or population balanced as regards sexes.
The DI informed me their research had noted this approach led eventually to deer numbers increasing over time. Experienced deer cullers I listened to said they’d noticed a hard cull led to the next year’s calves or fawns being mostly female.
I’m no expert but all my time on my licences and ground is concentrated on female deer until 31 March (this year 23 March)
I’m confident I’m doing my best to keep populations in check this way
It’s pyramid math. A Red Hinds lives average 14 years here in the wild and may have 13 to 14 calves of which half? can be female. Their female calves will do the same as as a mimimum. If I cull a red hind I cull 13 deer whereas if I cull a stag or buck I’m only culling one deer.
By all means discuss but it probly won’t be with me
Best of luck
 
I was part of a large cull a good few years ago, where we shot an extra month at hinds. Once into march, we decided to concentrate on calves and leave the hinds. Yes, it left the herd a bit imbalanced, but we felt it was better.
 
Woodsmoke said:
Not always. And especially not late term. I've only dtdptaddm told about it, and I sure as hell don't ever want to witness it for myself
Click to expand...

Well not sure about deer, but in humans after 10 mins in the womb of a dead mother a baby will be dead. Would a deer last significantly longer? How quickly do you like to commence gralloching a deer after shooting it, personally it’s probably unlikely I’d start within 10 mins
 
When I was a forestry Ranger with a Private forestry company the dates for does was extended. When the next Rangers meeting with the big bosses came round most of the guys said that we were not happy because of the big foetus. The boss put us in our place with a question. Would you be happy to kill a rabbit as a pest with 6/8 young inside it ? We all said no problem. His next comment was that deer are a forestry pest so there should be no difference. Good comment and hard to argue with it ...j
 
I shoot Muntjac does as heavily pregnant as possible and have had some extremely developed feotuses. Never had one try to stand after the gralloch. Personally I think that's a tall tale.

I shoot all other females until the last day in March. They are just as pregnant then as they are on the 1st of November.
 
Woodsmoke said:
I won't do it because at this time of year foetuses are viable. Ask any experienced stalker that's seen a foetus try to stand after the gralloch, and ask them if they still shoot at this time of year . . . .
Click to expand...
Killed a hell of a lot of hinds and have never seen a foetus try to stand most red deer are not born until mid June
and hind season ends 15th February thats a full four months before the calves will be born doubt that one is going
to try to stand.
Even when I have shot with an out of season license extended to the end of March by which time I admit the foetus
can be large I have still not seen one try to stand

Shooting hinds or does late season is not to everyones taste and if you are a recreational stalker then don't if its your
Job then you don't have the luxury of being squeamish.
 
IME it's best to do like awmc suggests, clatter the females hard every year, right from the start, the females always seem to be naturally more cautious than the males of many if not all the species, and the males are overexploited in many areas.
Shooting males in the female season is simply wasting time, and effort.
Proper forest design helps to get to grips with essentially a man made problem.
If every stalker in the country shot 4 females in order to obtain licence to take one male, it would be a start.

Putting run winter stags into the food chain does nothing for the marketing of venison as a quality product, that'll take the shine off the venison cheque for everyone, same with later/OOS hinds. Bean counters make these judgements, not deer managers, they probably think venison means 'sausages' or 'burgers', not something of real quality or value.
 
Here is my view on it , if say you have to shoot 100 hinds , and your at it from 21 Oct and the calf runs in to the trees with hind as she expires , you ain't going to get that calf , it wont do well through into winter , that's a fact , I would personally like to start a bit later and catch up with the extended time , then if you dont get your calf , it's less of a welfare issue , and I would prefer to kill a heavily pregnant Hind later in the season than leave a young calf earlier in the season each to there own but that's my view
 
When it comes to roe does i will stop shooting pregnant does soon after xmas, if your finding yourself shooting pregnant roe does well into march i think you have to ask yourself what your doing. Youve had months to get ontop of them and lets face it a couple of extra roe kicking around on your ground arnt exactly going to decimate the place and maybe some stalkers shouldnt be hinding behind the problems that say parts of scotland have with massive swaves of reds just to justify there want/need to kill a animal in march
 
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