At current prices, you would have to shoot a lot of deer to make a living from purely selling venison. Even if you had enough deer on the ground to sustain this level of hunting, they would soon move off under that level of pressure. So deer managers need to make their living guiding paying stalkers to take trophies, cull stalking too, of course; this is how they make the bulk of their income. To do this they need to manage large areas of land, and we can't blame them, but they can only shoot so many deer a year. While this is the case, the supply of venison will never meet the demand, especially with some AGHE's demanding only deer head shot with copper.
The problem is that deer numbers are climbing, herds of Fallow in the south west are now numbered in the hundreds, high hundreds in some areas, Muntjac are spreading and multiplying faster than we can shoot them. The damage they are causing is evident to anyone that spends any time in the countryside. I fear that if we don't come up with an answer soon, the decision will be taken out of our hands and the Government (DEFRA) will implement a mandatory deer cull, which will end up with burning carcasses across the country.
This is my opinion and I could be wrong, I also don't know what the answer is, but the fact remains that we do not shoot enough deer and the damage they are causing will soon be irreversible.
reds this end are fat as the ground is better and a bit walmer.
