I read your opening remarks Stu, and immediately got hit with the various wild deer situations. Forgetting park or captive deer for one minute, how about Woodland versus hill deer for a start ? Then forget the hill deer bit and think about the various situations for woodland deer and possibly management - and I say - possibly management, but it depends a lot on what is interpreteed by each individual as management, and this is dictated by the woodlands after personal preferences are considered.
Is it beside a heavily populated urban area or fairly remote - is it confounded by bridle paths and encroachment, is it FC land, broadleaf or conifer ? ?
This subject seems to me to be a minefield for anyone trying to formulate an opinion and it must be down to the individual who has the shooting to spend a lot of time on the ground and thinking about it before coming to a decision on how it might be managed - then trying it out - and that takes time, probably at least the generation age of a deer.
It's easy to sit in a chair and criticise, and dangerous to generalise as each territory has its own pitfalls.
Hill deer management is relatively easy - apart from the work - if the population is fairly static or in an 'Island' situation. It's not so easy where the travelling stags - or in some cases, hinds, move across several deer forests according to seasonal requirements of their own.
So you can get one estate virtually stripped because it historically plays winter host to several hundred deer, then they disappear during the summer to spread out across various other deer estates, (deer forests), and finally settle down somewhere else altogether for the rut and shooting season.
So, hill deer management is very much down to geographical deer groups within which the estates should work together, and that is often difficult because opinions vary and needs or aims are often different.
BUT, the deer are visible and countable for much of the time and that helps a lot.
You opened up a whole barrel full of worms and it's time I backed out.
Thanks for a very thought-provoking thread.