Deer Management Plan

[Chris Richardson]

QUOTE="rutland, post: 3334424, member: 13168"]
What Tim says above is all true. When you first start out or have the chance of ground of your own it’s very easy to get tunnel vision and think yes I’ll do that. But actually the reality of it is it’s a job and as such you need payment. Once you start operating under these schemes and your proven it does open up further opportunities

All I’m suggesting is think before you leap , there are plenty of guys out there who WILL do it for nothing . If it’s a big woodland area with new plantations then your hands are tied but I look after 3 smallish woods and manage them without to much hassle at weekends and each produce 50 each , depends on the area of woodland .
[/QUOTE]
Quite right they WILL do it for nothing but are they any good ? I’ve found the vast majority of recreational stalkers simply can’t / won’t manage it

 

[DevonRifle]

So he will now be paid for you to shoot his deer - has he indicated any return that yiu will get from this new arrangement?

And I don’t pay for the stalking rights which will be increasing, I will be forced to talk to all the neighbouring farms about their cull plans (currently non existent) and secure the land long term. He can keep the money. If I get paid it would affect my insurance I believe as well.

I’ve never paid to stalk deer and that’s a privilege I do not take for granted but that’s my stalking life, each to their own. If you can charge then hats off to you.

 

[DevonRifle]

Have a read of this, there’s more to it than just submitting a deer management plan - you’ll need to keep records of your activity for proof the plan is being implemented & to record your cull figures as well as unsuccessful stalks.

management requirements for deer control woodland supplement (WS1)

www.gov.uk

I already keep records for him and all the land I shoot on.

 

[Bugsy]

This 100 % it takes over your life , the amount of lads I’ve taken out then say oh my freezers full I’m not bothered, my landowners couldn’t give a rats @ss if my freezers full they want the job done

I’m in the same situation but I always manage to sell them to some game dealer and keep the wheels rolling .. once you loose the ground it’s gone whether it be to useless stalkers or not somebody will fill it .

 

[DevonRifle]

The woodland is only 35ha. I’m losing another permission (building a solar farm) that I take 12 roe deer a year from. If I just replace that number I still have capacity for another 5 before I need to look for an outlet. My family and I could consume 20-25 roe deer a year without selling any. If it were a lot bigger then I would have to worry but it’s ideal for me. The land owner will be paying for tree stands and a few other expenses so I’m very happy with the arrangement. Plus it’s an incredibly beautiful place to be, 2 miles from home with beavers, otters, barn owls, woodpeckers and lots more and no public footpaths. It’s heaven.

 

[Bugsy]

The woodland is only 35ha. I’m losing another permission (building a solar farm) that I take 12 roe deer a year from. If I just replace that number I still have capacity for another 5 before I need to look for an outlet. My family and I could consume 20-25 roe deer a year without selling any. If it were a lot bigger then I would have to worry but it’s ideal for me. The land owner will be paying for tree stands and a few other expenses so I’m very happy with the arrangement. Plus it’s an incredibly beautiful place to be, 2 miles from home with beavers, otters, barn owls, woodpeckers and lots more and no public footpaths. It’s heaven.

That’s a winner you’ve got a paradise on your doorstep by the sounds of it and very hard to come by down your way by other stories but there’s only one other place better and that’s sunny Scotland where the deer better , the otters are cuter , the woodpeckers can peck through concrete and to see a beaver you only need to go down the street on a Saturday night and its crawling wi beaver

 

[HonestJohn]

I’d say charge £250/deer min. It’s a farmer/banker, he thinks you’re stupid and chomping at the bit, tightest bastards I ever met, good at convincing you they’re broke too and life is terrible, but they have bloody piles of gold stashed away

 

[Donkey Basher]

The woodland is only 35ha. I’m losing another permission (building a solar farm) that I take 12 roe deer a year from. If I just replace that number I still have capacity for another 5 before I need to look for an outlet. My family and I could consume 20-25 roe deer a year without selling any. If it were a lot bigger then I would have to worry but it’s ideal for me. The land owner will be paying for tree stands and a few other expenses so I’m very happy with the arrangement. Plus it’s an incredibly beautiful place to be, 2 miles from home with beavers, otters, barn owls, woodpeckers and lots more and no public footpaths. It’s heaven.

Just a couple of things to throw into the mix that you may or may not have thought of.

The WS1 scheme, from memory, pays the landowner £90 per hectare for woodland AND affected land per annum.

So, number 1, the landowner is going to get £3150pa for the 35ha of woodland - he will also get a grant for buying highseats provided they meet the specification. On that basis I’d be talking to him about how many seats you want him to provide & where to put them up.

Number 2, if he’s included any additional land as ‘affected’ ie arable fields where the deer are causing crop damage, then the £pa will be higher as will the eligibility for money for highseats.

Finally, of course, any expenditure not from the grant can be offset against profit for the farm so reduces his tax liability.

All great that you have the ground for the reasons you state but don’t get mugged off in the process.

Sounds like a nice little haven to me, somewhere I’d love to just go & sit up of an evening & let the world float by

 

[weblyish]

the WS1 payment is now £105/ha so it is worth £3.5k p.a. for the farmer if the paperwork is in order
and it falls into 3 quite separate parts

1. Impact assessment study/building, maintaining and inspecting the exclosures
2. paperwork, Form filling, writing the plan and the Year3 and 5 updates and general admin
3. Managing the deer to meet the requirements of the cull plan

Number 3 you might be very happy to do for free and that can be a fair trade if it works for you but to meet the plan target you will have to be logging 15+ hours per month minimum so for most people that will be all your stalking and more

but parts 1 and 2 are the ballache and don't agree to do the lot for free unless you find it easy and want to do that

part 1 impact assessment evidence is worth a couple of hundred quid in Y1,Y3 and Y5 - show him a couple of quotes for a deer impact assessment survey and say maybe you will do it for free if he puts the high eats up and cuts some rides and lets you use a quad or whatever

part 2 you really should leave to the farmer, if you are asking for a template for the DMP I'll be honest in the nicest possible way you have more of a learning curve ahead of you than you realise - let it be their problem to put the paperwork in or they dont get the money not yours

 

[Donkey Basher]

the WS1 payment is now £105/ha so it is worth £3.5k p.a. for the farmer if the paperwork is in order
and it falls into 3 quite separate parts

1. Impact assessment study/building, maintaining and inspecting the exclosures
2. paperwork, Form filling, writing the plan and the Year3 and 5 updates and general admin
3. Managing the deer to meet the requirements of the cull plan

Number 3 you might be very happy to do for free and that can be a fair trade if it works for you but to meet the plan target you will have to be logging 15+ hours per month minimum so for most people that will be all your stalking and more

but parts 1 and 2 are the ballache and don't agree to do the lot for free unless you find it easy and want to do that

part 1 impact assessment evidence is worth a couple of hundred quid in Y1,Y3 and Y5 - show him a couple of quotes for a deer impact assessment survey and say maybe you will do it for free if he puts the high eats up and cuts some rides and lets you use a quad or whatever

part 2 you really should leave to the farmer, if you are asking for a template for the DMP I'll be honest in the nicest possible way you have more of a learning curve ahead of you than you realise - let it be their problem to put the paperwork in or they dont get the money not yours

This is a great explanation & also educated me to the fact that the payment is now £105/ha!

I’m fortunate in that I’m solely involved in part 3 & the landowner has an agent who deals with parts 1 & 2.

Part 3 on its own is time consuming enough, requiring over 100 hours a month as an average on the farm I stalk - this works out more during the winter as there’s less opportunity/need to get out in the May/June/July due to closed seasons. Luckily there are 4 of us who work as a regular team plus the occasional family member or guest. That still works out at needing to be out for 2.5-3 hours 8 - 10 times a month (2-3 times a week) on average!

This all needs recording, along with location on the farm/estate for each outing, time spent on each outing, deer culled (or not) on each outing along with species, age & sex for each one.

For a recreational stalker who gets free stalking in return for deer control this suddenly becomes quite onerous & as others have said it’ll start taking up a lot of your life. Meantime the landowner is paid for your efforts.

I’m quite happy stalking on this basis as I have ground that’s less than 5 minutes drive from me, I can go out whenever I want/have time, I get free venison when I want it & it is still a hobby for me. What it does mean though is that I don’t have the luxury of stalking just for a trophy animal or only as & when I need some more venison in the freezer - I spend a LOT of time out in the winter culling does & take every opportunity that presents itself to take a 2nd, or 3rd, or 4th animal from a group regardless of whether the shot might damage a shoulder etc.

I still remember the words of the old keeper who first took me out stalking “there are two types of deer shooter; gentlemen stalkers like His Lordship who sit up a highseat in July after a Roe Buck & murdering bastards like me who are out in all weathers during the winter managing deer”. Wise words & ones I’ve never forgotten.

I certainly wouldn’t want the responsibility of being the sole stalker for a WS1 scheme on even 25% of the ground I have access to now, & even less so if it were made up of different blocks in various locations requiring time travelling to & from. That’d just take all the fun out of it for me.

Sorry, this has turned into a bit more than I was expecting to say, but I hope it gives the OP & others some useful insight into the realities of stalking in a WS1 scheme.

 

[Ben23]

Just hopping in here, as I now own a 25ha block of ancient woodland, and we've been asked for a Deer Management Plan. Are there people out there who charge for writing up the plan? I'm the site's stalker, and can spare the hours for stalking the site, but can't see me having the time to write up the whole plan with current workload! As you say, it's quite the learning curve, and I'm quite time poor right now. Not currently registered with CS, so can't get any grants yet.

PM me if preferred!

 

[DevonRifle]

Some really helpful and thought provoking input that was more helpful than I expected. Thank you all.

High seats are being provided by the landowner and there are rides through the woods, some natural and some managed. The wood is a small valley which lends to natural high points but there are some denser parts that require seats. The opportunity is good with numbers and with losing my best permission shortly it seems like an answer to prayers but stalking woodland is not the same as a farm which I am more used to. I would like to be part of the paperwork but now realise that I don’t want to do it all. The reason I want to be part is to have conversations with the neighbouring farmers if only to get permission to shoot the edge of the woods from the adjacent fields. Something the woodland owner has already suggested to the landowners but doesn’t quite get that I have to be the one having those conversations and getting the permission first hand rather than through him. He has good communication with them and I message them whenever I stalk the woods. One farmer was interested in me stalking a while back but his parents wanted half the animals that I shot and I didn’t persue it for that reason. Just shooting the edge of their land will likely be acceptable to call the deer mine.

 

[Ruby Tuesday 2]

I’d say go for it, it’s your relationship with the landowner that makes or breaks it. I’ve ground that I get on really well with the farmer and I don’t care if he earns from me being there, I’m paid in other ways like fantastic stalking on my doorstep with a landowner that wants me there and will help all he can. I’ve had others areas where you’re always feeling you’re not doing enough to please them and despite all the hours you put in you still feel like you owe them. When you’ve got enough ground you can choose whether you keep it up as when your hobby starts causing you stress or pressure it’s no longer a hobby.