Cull deer
A few observations, if I may?
There are people in this world who get very excited over the prospect of a nice rack to hang on the wall at home - and there are estates that manage their wild stock in a way that enables this market to be exploited to the maximum.
An alternative management policy - and it's one that the BDS promotes - aims to achieve a 1:1 sex ratio with an appropriate mix of age classes. If the ground is not regularly poached and neighbouring estates have a similarly benign management policy, there may be occasional trophy heads to be removed but the majority of animals culled will be female and young. Stalking here is likely to be advertised as 'cull stalking' - to make it clear that trophy hunters need not apply.
I now turn to the matter of fees.
Three factors are at play. Deer eat trees and crops. Estates need maintaining. A lot of people want to kill deer and, as the value of stalking lets demonstrates, are prepared to pay to do it, often royally.
It's naive in the extreme for the would-be stalker to imagine that he's doing the estate a favour by going out with a guide to shoot cull animals. A competent deer manager can shoot more animals more quickly alone than he can with a visitor in tow. Visitors slow the cull, they don't help it - but they do generate necessary revenue.
In the case of an estate where the land owner seeks simply to maintain a equilibrium between the damage caused by deer and the amenity value of having them on the ground, (see above), the per-animal cull fees are typically lumped with carcass value to help offset the cost of estate maintenance. Wringing the maximum financial return from the deer is not the primary motivation and this will often be reflected in lower cull fees.
However, many estates do not take such an approach. I AWd a while back for two stalkers who together rented the stalking on a big estate. They paid an annual fee of some £7,000 but the previous tenants had shot the place almost completely out and so my two stalkers were treading lightly with the aim of encouraging re-population. With no chance of recovering the high cost of their sport through venison yield alone, advertising for paying visitors was their only option and it meant charges were high. They found willing customers from the Continent.
The fact is that a market exists in deer because deer have associated costs and landowners, unless they are remarkably philanthropic, seek at least to recover those costs. Unless a stalker is very lucky, he or she is therefore going to pay to stalk.
For what it may be worth, my advice is to become useful. Get as well qualified as it is possible to be, get as much experience as possible, and build a reputation for being informed, honest, ethical, humane - and good company. To some landowners - and such people do exist - these qualities matter more than the odd cull fee.
With kind regards to all.
KF