Tell me again why public access stalking isn’t a viable option

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Can you imagine public stalking tags arranged by the Scottish government.
Imagine the prerequisites you'd need to submit

DSC 1&2 obviously
Efaw+F obviously
Manual handling course
Legionella /water impact
Ecology Training before entering SSSI
Emergency procedure training
Evacuation policy
Policy for high wind/adverse weather
Risk assessment
They would 100% add in some sort of weapon handling/safety assessment (despite having to have FAC and DSC)

The bundle to apply would be 500pages
 
Rake Aboot said:
Some encouraging replies there folks

My own personal opinion is that a tag system would be the preferred method.
Apply for a tag , set a time window and go shoot a deer for yourself.
Click to expand...
In theory, but…

Let’s say 200 deer need shot. On an estate that’s probably in the region of 5000 hectares (I’m guessing here based on average sizes).

How many people can be out safely per day? Probably in the region of 5 at most. The deer won’t be evenly spread - and will quickly bunch up under pressure. So how many will be successful per day? Let’s be generous and say 2. If they’re recreational stalkers, they’re unlikely to want to or be able to extract more than 1 each per day.

So you’re shooting 2 a day. That’s 100 days where you’ve got stalkers out on the ground. Because they’re recreational and unlikely to know the ground well, they’ll go to the same easily accessible, visible places over and over. The deer will quickly start avoiding those. Cull success drops off quickly.

It’s not a viable model on big areas of open ground where hundreds need shot.

On the other hand, it could be easily made to work in woodland with rides/tracks and lots of high seats and boxes. This I think is one of the reasons for why it often works really well in a lot of the US public areas - they tend to spend the bulk of their time in tree stands.
 
Mungo said:
In theory, but…

Let’s say 200 deer need shot. On an estate that’s probably in the region of 5000 hectares (I’m guessing here based on average sizes).

How many people can be out safely per day? Probably in the region of 5 at most. The deer won’t be evenly spread - and will quickly bunch up under pressure. So how many will be successful per day? Let’s be generous and say 2. If they’re recreational stalkers, they’re unlikely to want to or be able to extract more than 1 each per day.

So you’re shooting 2 a day. That’s 100 days where you’ve got stalkers out on the ground. Because they’re recreational and unlikely to know the ground well, they’ll go to the same easily accessible, visible places over and over. The deer will quickly start avoiding those. Cull success drops off quickly.

It’s not a viable model on big areas of open ground where hundreds need shot.

On the other hand, it could be easily made to work in woodland with rides/tracks and lots of high seats and boxes. This I think is one of the reasons for why it often works really well in a lot of the US public areas - they tend to spend the bulk of their time in tree stands.
Click to expand...
Well I mean I guess we can always send in the helicopter gunships for max effectiveness hahaha. Should have them cleared out in an afternoon!
 
weblyish said:
Can you imagine public stalking tags arranged by the Scottish government.
Imagine the prerequisites you'd need to submit

DSC 1&2 obviously
Efaw+F obviously
Manual handling course
Legionella /water impact
Ecology Training before entering SSSI
Emergency procedure training
Evacuation policy
Policy for high wind/adverse weather
Risk assessment
They would 100% add in some sort of weapon handling/safety assessment (despite having to have FAC and DSC)

The bundle to apply would be 500pages
Click to expand...
you know the more I think about this, the more I think you might be right. America is a bit of a different animal, and any time Ive had to do anything for the government here its always insane. Here's me thinking they would naturally come up with simple solutions that make practical sense on their own! This may be a much more complex topic than we think.
 
Electric Ian said:
How so?
Click to expand...
Less pressure to achieve numbers. Vested interested in the quality of the end product. Not driven by cost/time/schedules. Etc.

Obviously I'm not tarring all contractors with the same brush, but my personal experience has shown a lot of them just want the numbers achieved at any cost
 
Mungo said:
In theory, but…

Let’s say 200 deer need shot. On an estate that’s probably in the region of 5000 hectares (I’m guessing here based on average sizes).

How many people can be out safely per day? Probably in the region of 5 at most. The deer won’t be evenly spread - and will quickly bunch up under pressure. So how many will be successful per day? Let’s be generous and say 2. If they’re recreational stalkers, they’re unlikely to want to or be able to extract more than 1 each per day.

So you’re shooting 2 a day. That’s 100 days where you’ve got stalkers out on the ground. Because they’re recreational and unlikely to know the ground well, they’ll go to the same easily accessible, visible places over and over. The deer will quickly start avoiding those. Cull success drops off quickly.

It’s not a viable model on big areas of open ground where hundreds need shot.

On the other hand, it could be easily made to work in woodland with rides/tracks and lots of high seats and boxes. This I think is one of the reasons for why it often works really well in a lot of the US public areas - they tend to spend the bulk of their time in tree stands.
Click to expand...
I totally agree, that it tends to work well across the pond due to the use of tree stands, it would be very difficult if it was purely open hill by folk bumping deer to often because they don’t know the ground that would eventually make them harder to stalk or even push them off the ground, I hope some good local stalkers get work out of this.
 
Pedro said:
A high proportion of land is privately owned in the UK. If I owned a tract of land (I'll wake up in a minute) I'm not too sure I'd like folk I don't know roaming about all over it shooting stuff out with my control.
Click to expand...
That’s why the govt in Scotland can mandate public access , to stop private landowners shutting the gates

It’s really not a complex issue , it’s simply not even considered
 
Here's a thought, if the estate is going to be forced to cull with the costs landing at the estates door, could the SD collective put in a well put together management plan and take over the deer management with the estate earning a small proportion in the form of a lease/contract?
It could possibly lead to tag system distributed through SD and inexperienced members being accompanied possibly training for DSC.
 
Realistically how many people are going to be out at a time and how ‘accessible’ will it really be in real life.

From the sounds of people organising syndicates of 5 people they struggle to allocate time - especially the weekends when people want to go.

I see the logic but I can’t see public stalking working that well especially when there is pressure for numbers and the country is as harsh as it is there for extraction etc
 
Dan Newcombe said:
Realistically how many people are going to be out at a time and how ‘accessible’ will it really be in real life.

From the sounds of people organising syndicates of 5 people they struggle to allocate time - especially the weekends when people want to go.

I see the logic but I can’t see public stalking working that well especially when there is pressure for numbers and the country is as harsh as it is there for extraction etc
Click to expand...


1744216457824.webp
 
Leroux said:
The tag system in the USA is on public or state land not private estates.
Click to expand...
It’s also on absolutely vast areas in comparison to single estates here - orders of magnitude bigger. Often with deer populations that are much less dense.

Tag systems work on large areas with low cull requirements. They don’t on restricted areas with high cull requirements.

This is well known.

They also are not something that private landowners are ever comfortable with, for obvious reasons.
 
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