The leisure stalkers , why , how , where do we fit in ?

[bottletopbill]

As we all know some pro stalkers you are paying for a walk and never see a deer yet shoot one.
Other pro stalkers have the numbers of deer for there stalkers and can be seen and shot.
So I have seen both types of pro .
So as with pro and part time we can all do our bit

 

[billy_boyle_2010]

Very well put.
If as a landowner deer were causing thousands of pounds worth of damage, I would pay thousands of pounds to have them sorted. If not then there won’t be a reason to pay someone to stalk so there is a necessity for someone recrational.
The alternative is no stalking at all.

I would imagine the larger deer species in some parts of the country could pay a stalker quite nicely. £2-3/kg from fallow or reds would be worth many peoples time if the ground was productive- but for patchy ground that's hit or miss- anyone trying to make a living from it would likely find it not worth their time- which is where the amateur comes in

 

[@theroedeerguy]

Reading with interest because in my opinion, In Scotland at least, the days of recreational stalking are numbered .
Trained , paid “Professional “ stalkers is what my gut tells me the Scottish government want.

And an end to trophy hunting.

I’d disagree with that having just been involved in a NatureScot project that highlighted the value recreational stalkers add to national deer management annual cull figures.

Given the recent budgetary constraints I’d doubt there’s any funding available to even pilot a “professional” only scheme let alone roll one out nationally.

As for trophy hunting, more work needs to be done by the industry to explain the value to the species that deer stalkers who want to return year after year add and that the value of the deer stalking experience is largely responsible for keeping deer from being considered as an uneconomical pest.

 

[Rake Aboot]

The value of recreational stalkers that they are now paying £70 a doe to in the Ayrshire pilot scheme ?
Isn’t that a paid stalker ?
“Given the recent budgetary constraints I’d doubt there’s any funding available to even pilot a “professional” only scheme let alone roll one out nationally”

Isn’t that what they’ve done ?

Regarding the value of stalking , the government don’t care. The political attitude is against trophy hunting .

 

[Tim.243]

I would imagine the larger deer species in some parts of the country could pay a stalker quite nicely. £2-3/kg from fallow or reds would be worth many peoples time if the ground was productive- but for patchy ground that's hit or miss- anyone trying to make a living from it would likely find it not worth their time- which is where the amateur comes in

With the patchy ground then the pro/culling stalkers will want better ground. Once they have cleared that then on again, No different to clearing big blocks of woodland, with a retained stalker on an estate there could be a chance of being in an estate house so clients stalking fee's then the trimming up of numbers. It is a lifestyle choice, my money says that most "deer managers" have a primarily job to pay all the bills then fit in the deer around what time they have, or have enough previous income so they have the time.
Picking off muntjac has a place around here as they just keep coming so I go for an 1/12 look then will move on to foxing after as I am already on the ground.

 

[Apthorpe]

The thing about stalking, like many other areas of natural resource management is that it isn't a stand-alone matter; it has effects and consequences across much wider areas. Also, like much else in the environment, good quality data does not exist. These two facts alone make it a very unsuitable matter for government or other centralised management. You cannot successfully manage something when you don't know where it is, how much of it there is and don't understand the effects of it.
Certainly, there will be lots of people who resist this fact and insist that not only do they know enough, but that they also have correct ideas for management - or worse that they have some sort of moral, political or ethical mandate to interfere. There shouldn't be a "grand scheme of deer control" nor should there be national policies.

Even among stalkers, there are radically different approaches. You have the "peasant farmer" type, who has a bit of land and manages the deer within those borders with a wide diversity of approach and pretty much eats what he shoots, or distributes informally. At the other end, you have "professional cullers", the slash-and-burn rainforest loggers of the deer world, where everything is intensively shot on sight with no value added and no regard to the market demand for the product. They extract only the reduction in tree damage and the lowest possible value of the deer, while simultaneously destroying the wider sources of value. In between, you have people stalking other people's land as a side-hustle, as a small business combining with tourism - taking out clients, providing accommodation and wider employment and so on. These people are probably extracting the maximum value, the maximum local contributions to the economy and so on. None of them are THE right answer, appropriate and shifting variations of all approaches contain the right answer some of the time. A diversity of approach is better, for many reasons including increasing the knowledge of the subject.

Combined with this, you have very poor levels of information. Entire policies have been built on estimates which are nothing more than guesswork. Lots of people appear to believe that the numbers of deer have been rising massively, but the fact is that nobody has a remotely realistic idea of the numbers in detail. I'd bet the large majority of us couldn't even work out what a shot deer is worth.

 

[angusb1]

Reading with interest because in my opinion, In Scotland at least, the days of recreational stalking are numbered .
Trained , paid “Professional “ stalkers is what my gut tells me the Scottish government want.

And an end to trophy hunting.

I would dearly love to see the current Scottish government out of office for this reason.

 

[Andy - Fish]

Reading with interest because in my opinion, In Scotland at least, the days of recreational stalking are numbered .
Trained , paid “Professional “ stalkers is what my gut tells me the Scottish government want.

And an end to trophy hunting.

I agree with the above maybe not imminent but eventually along with driven birds

 

[HonestJohn]

Yet !
Or should that be none spotted ?

recently told by a local they are near Ettrickbridge. He’s from Oxford way originally so sure as shite knows what a munty looks like. We need to get them up to the highlands so we have some sport now that the reds have been subject to eradication by persecution - also far easier to extract Munties off the hill than stags although not quite as spectacular in the rut

 

[HonestJohn]

I agree with the above maybe not imminent but eventually along with driven birds

Too many highly influential (shooting) people, high net worth funding political parties and supporting govt to get banned. Look at the Range Rover brigade and the power and influence they have in Westminster and Holyrood.

Sadly, most politicians are mere puppets and their masters (with fancy Holland and Hollands often of course) have the funding power, whilst the plebs are meant to believe their votes count and opinions are listened too.

Anyone for new clothes and spectacles?

You will likely see public / national land all contract based, along with the swathes of carbon capture peatland being ‘re’ stocked…

Local farmland can never be managed in such way, for many reasons including that farmers will never pay for deer management, and never agree to let random contractors drive over their land at night AND get paid for it.
Local deer management will probably continue as is, as long as there are deer.

 

[Tim.243]

Too many highly influential (shooting) people, high net worth funding political parties and supporting govt to get banned. Look at the Range Rover brigade and the power and influence they have in Westminster and Holyrood.

Sadly, most politicians are mere puppets and their masters (with fancy Holland and Hollands often of course) have the funding power, whilst the plebs are meant to believe their votes count and opinions are listened too.

Anyone for new clothes and spectacles?

You will likely see public / national land all contract based, along with the swathes of carbon capture peatland being ‘re’ stocked…

Local farmland can never be managed in such way, for many reasons including that farmers will never pay for deer management, and never agree to let random contractors drive over their land at night AND get paid for it.
Local deer management will probably continue as is, as long as there are deer.

The part in bold is about right.

 

[Spear Chucker]

Why on earth shouldn't it be secret? Not only is it nobody else's business, but it is a security risk to make this sort of information transparently known. The only beneficiaries from this sort of thing are socialists and antis.

Why? If your premise is that too few deer are being shot on your ground, just shoot more or share the ground? Alternatively, if you think too few are being shot on someone else's ground, that slightly comes down to wondering why your opinion is better than the other person's. Regardless of that, what you recommend of having an organised group manage a wider area per group has the mathematical problem that you then necessarily have less shooting effort being done.

Good post. 4 Govts on the trot have had no interest in facts or science, legislating in all cases against proven scientifically backed evidence. Major shooting organisations seem more interested in their, not our survival and cosying up to the enemy, pretending it is in our interests.
For all the those that whitter on about education being the answer, all they are doing is educating our enemies and providing them with a target.
Politicians are swine, interested only in self promotion and self preservation. No votes to be had in arguing the case for people like us or our activities.
We are dodos. Only when we have been co-operated out of existence by the likes of the CA / BASC (in spite of their occasional but increasingly rare flashes of brilliance) or bludgeoned to death by the Daily Mail and Mr Packham, will people realise the value of what we do and represent.

 

[Messy11]

Two things give me cause for concern:

1. In 2022 there was a Government/DEFRA UK-wide consultation on deer management.
(The need for such due to accepted numbers and commensurate damage within the landscape).

It was never published and in consequence nothing, that I'm aware of, has come of it.

2. Only today we learn of another Government (FSA) consultation:

Call for Evidence: The impact of discounts on charges for official controls and other official activities in relation to meat premises

The purpose of the call for evidence is to gather evidence on how discounts applied to charges for official controls (OC) and other official activities (OOA) for businesses in the meat sector provide benefits to businesses and consumers

www.food.gov.uk

The basis for this is as per the above link but my fear is the deal is already done and all abattoirs, of any size, will soon have to meet the significant increase in inspection costs. Further, how long before the FSA apply their food hygiene and public safety reasoning to registered "Small Foof Business" such as deerstalking butchers?

K

This is really an issue.
Regulation is both necessary and important for food entering the food chain, however, it does seem that burgeoning costs and regulation will be be used to usher in BIG food style changes here, just as it has more aggressively in the US. Its true of the wider farming world, with farms likely to be targeted through IHT, such that in a generation only large farming / food corporations will be able to own land and process meat etc.

We in the hunting world are a smaller part of the wider issue and in fact quite a threat to the achievement of it, because by its nature its a fragmented market that operates predominantly at a local level. Regulation and cost is the ideal way of that being centralised/ consolidated (be that by licensing, regulatory cost, etc). It's therefore important that everything possible is done to participate in these consultations and to resist in every legal way as far as possible.

 

[Bavarianbrit]

Jh1986 yes will be looking very soon. Thanks
Tim.243 yes i am up for it
Bavarianbrit used to drive to Deal rifle club every Tuesday night 141 miles round trip to shoot 50r 22lr no trouble.
The club was opposite the theater up the alley. great bunch of guy's

Where did you get that idea?
I lived in Church Street Walmer until 2002 so it was 2 miles at most, then I left the UK for Bavaria and my membership lapsed naturally. They were a really nice crowd, very social too afterwards into the Rose pub till closing time then nearly every week going around to various members houses for coffee, often till 3am. Happy days but the pistol ban took precedence = leave Dodge for a place with fairer laws.

 

[jcampbellsmith]

The value of recreational stalkers that they are now paying £70 a doe to in the Ayrshire pilot scheme ?...

The payments are only being made for culls that exceed previous cull levels, for the details see - Deer cull incentive schemes launch to help tackle nature and climate crises
Regards
JCS

 

[David Barker]

The value of recreational stalkers that they are now paying £70 a doe to in the Ayrshire pilot scheme ?
Isn’t that a paid stalker ?
“Given the recent budgetary constraints I’d doubt there’s any funding available to even pilot a “professional” only scheme let alone roll one out nationally”

Isn’t that what they’ve done ?

Regarding the value of stalking , the government don’t care. The political attitude is against trophy hunting .

The scheme is in Stirlingshire down to Mugdock park. I here the take up is slow at best and the 90 grand will need to be used so will filter back in to the department it was given to. Why didn't it take off ? Simple Government departments using the £70 as a smoke screen to lift information for a previous Pilot from 2017 that had ran in to a dead end. What are we worth. Well FLS shoot 3o to 35000 deer a year cost the Scottish tax payer in excess of 20.000,000 pounds. 2600 lev to deer managers across the central belt of scotland shoot 8.7 deer each. 22,620 in total coast free government make money through taxes to all aspects of there stalking. Please don't ask if the Rec Stalker is worth anything as you seriously underestimate the massive effect you have on the increase in numbers and the spread of species. You can add to the rec numbers the lev 1 holders and the many deer stalkers who do not have any formal training.