bottletopbill
Well-Known Member
This is why people miss out other's taking the p-ss and back stabbing as above.
This is ruining shooting all over the U K
This is ruining shooting all over the U K
UK Government Launches UK Deer Management Strategy Consultation
- Thread starter wytonpjs
- Start date
Which is precisely one of the reasons why game dealers set their prices so low - inconsistent quality of carcasses being brought in to them by stalkers.
But inconsistency due to seasonality (ie, sometimes it's available and sometimes it's not) can also be used as a selling point, particularly as consumers are being encouraged to eat with the seasons these days, as a way of cutting food miles.
In my very limited experience, not a lot of difference in the meat of fallow or roe. However fallow liver can be strongly tainted when from a buck during the mating season.
Based on helping out during a park cull at that time of year (October-November). GF and I like to make liver pate, sliced liver, liver sausage etc. so scooped up as much offal as possible for the freezer which otherwise was going to be chucked. Delicious hearts and kidneys too.
Soon learned that fallow buck liver from that sort of time was not very nice. The Deer Keeper did warn us about this, we tried cooking some, compared with that from the does, and he was correct.
Leec6.5
Well-Known Member
Behind the scenes carbon footprint doesn’t matter, as long as the supermarket can get what it wants at the Weights it wants it, the amount it wants and it the price it wants nothing else matters pounds shillings and pence!
It's perfectly obvious. Apart from the consistency, their seasons are six months out of phase with ours. If you want to supply venison all year around to e.g. supermarkets you either use it, or have to stockpile massive amounts in expensive freezers to eke out the locally sourced stuff.
Supermarket customers aren't really clued up about seasonality, despite what they might say in surveys. If they are thinking about buying some venison for a special treat, they expect to just be able to get some whatever the time of year. They need educating.
And marketing. E.g. get ready for this season's venison, shelves will be filled starting day x. Grab it while you can. PS: it's fresh, take it home and freeze it so you have it whenever in the year you want to treat yourself. PS: our in-store butcher's counter will vacuum pack it in excellent freezer bags for you for a very modest fee. Please do not just freeze it in the clingfilm packaging for more than say three months.
Maybe we need some marketeers like in the glory days when London restaurants would compete to be the first to have grouse on the dining table on the Glorious 12th (yuck, grouse need hanging). or even that made up thing about having the first of the "Beaujolais nouveau" on the menu, preferably delivered in style by competing teams of socialites and racing drivers to great publicity.
Disgusting stuff, tasted like bubblegum.
Perhaps I am revealing my age.
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Yes, but when is the UK deerstalker not in a position to supply freshly shot venison to the market? “Venison” being muntjac, roe, fallow, sika, red and of both sexes. Oh, and who are all these people eating venison!
K
It really is a pretty poor show ATM, when supermarkets, and many butchers, can't be arsed to even identify what species it is. I've even had a disappointing discussion with a butcher (in Norfolk) offering "venison" and politely asked him what it was. It's deer, innit, etc. So I educated him that it could only be Roe or Muntjac, or just possibly something else shot under an out-of-season license. Shrugged shoulders, I got it from my man. What in the fur, you skinned and butchered it, surely you know what it is ? Naah, my man sells it to me skinned and quartered, I take it from there. Seriously ? Yeah if I want some more I give him a bell and he delivers. What, any time of year ? Yes, of course. Does he deliver it properly chilled ? Blank stare.
It was pretty rank looking stuff too. If somebody new to venison had tried some of that I doubt it would have been a gourmet experience.
Oh dear.
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Farmed deer are not restricted by seasonality - they can be a killed at any time.
Park deer are basically wild deer living within an enclosed area. They have the same seasonal restrictions, and there are also issues with inconsistent quality as they are stalked and shot (so poor placement can ruin a carcass), not killed in an abattoir like farmed deer.
Yes. Agreed. But there are parks, and really enormous ones. One of which I used to stalk every couple of weeks. Usually coming back with two muntjac, as much as I felt like carrying back to the larder. Never blanked. BTW I consider Muntjac the tastiest of all venison that I have eaten, barring Père David (a private party at a private collection).
IMO park deer are subject to far less stress than farmed ones that have to be trucked away to the abattoir. Surely more humane to kill them cleanly where they live.
I detected an undesirable twist in the consultation questioning the current status of deer parks and gave my considered response rejecting their proposals to change their status on some trumped up mis-informed reasoning.
Thats not the way livestock farming works, deer or otherwise. Animals may be born in a particular season but growth rates are controlled by feeding practices to ensure a consistent supply of a reasonably conistent product.
After all british lamb is almost all born in the withing 2 -3 months in the spring but is avaiable all year round. -The first lambs being slaughtered at about 12 weeks old and the final at about 15 months.
Deer framing works the same way - som ekilled early staight off their mothers, other overwintered either in a shed or outside in kinder climates
)I know a little about how farming works. And the difference between lamb and mutton. But we are talking about wild venison, surely ? And managing their excessive numbers. This is what the consultation is all about. Apart from where they seem to have gone off-piste by including farms and parks in their remit. Why ?
I'd also venture to suggest (in ignorance of the facts) that the proportion of farmed deer vs. wild deer, in England/Wales (again, their remit) is rather small. Furthermore I can't see how farming deer is in any way better than farming say cattle, that have been bred to be highly efficient at turning their food into meat. I suspect that deer are not really very efficient at doing that.
If you have sufficient grazing to sustain a farm deer herd, well you could probably also sustain say rare breed cattle on that too. As does one of my farmer friends. Sussex rare breed. Organic. And another, Longhorns. Which do not need expensive deer fencing to constrain them. Friendly beasts too. And sell at very good prices, far above what a deer might fetch, farmed or wild. Some of the auction prices are eye-watering. Not that theirs get auctioned, every one they grow has a ready buyer who would like far more. They are grown to maturity, so have to be subjected to BSE testing (no it has not gone away entirely), but that is a minor detail. The Sussex cattle chap also makes good money from his bulls' spunk for artificial insemination. And selling any surplus hay in small bales to horsey people who insist that their darlings only eat organically.
I read your last post as refering to consistency of suppy of NZ venison, the vast majority of which is farmed.
True, farmed deer, cattle, sheep vs the wild product are all pretty much the same, but only to food pureists - the vast majority of consumers and definetly not supernmarkets couldnt give a stuff about the origin or their food, they just want it a scheap as possible.
Farmer deer numbers in the UK are pretty insignificant - arout 25,000 breeding females i think - another reason why so much is imported.
Not quite so similar as you're suggesting. Lambs from conventional farming systems (ie, not including flocks that lamb "out of season") in the UK are born over approximately a five month period (December - May) depending on the type of farm and the breed of sheep kept, whereas deer will generally give birth over a period of just a few weeks.
Variation in growth rates etc between breeds of sheep (which are all the same species) are huge, and there are more than 60 breeds found in the UK.
One of the biggest failings of the UK sheep industry is lack of consistency in the product, compared, say, with New Zealand, where there are relatively few different breeds kept commercially.
We don't have any different breeds of deer within each of our species (although there are some different strains of red), so, seasonality notwithstanding, farmed venison should be a more consistent product than UK lamb.
Park deer should be well up there, and wild deer too, but the inconsistencies that lead to poor prices are the fault of the stalkers. Poor choice of animal, poor shot placement, poor gralloching, poor carcass handling. The buyer has to pay for all of that, and understandably he doesn't want to. Those stalkers who do present good carcasses are penalised because of those who don't.
kieran222
Well-Known Member
Of course, that's what you would be using if they went the whole hog and permitted night shooting without requirement for permits.
Ban the import of foreign meats. Venison price goes up. More people cull deer. Result is less deer 
Leec6.5
Well-Known Member
Will never happen!Ban the import of foreign meats. Venison price goes up. More people cull deer. Result is less deer
People have been saying that for years and it’s never happened
I know but it's a lovely dream isn't it
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