Watch some of the public land vids on YouTube Prime or Netflix's. Frightening with various people hunting the same individual quarry at the same time!
Then look at the stats, I went into them in more detail on another thread. In Scotland we shoot 1 deer per year for every 66ac of public land. In the USA that figure is one for every 3,200 acres.
We simply dont have the space for public land hunting. Ok there are those that claim it would be cheaper to let the public shoot our public forests rather than paid rangers and contractors.
1. Leases dont work for the simple fact that leaseholders wand trophy heads and more deer so avoid shooting does.
2. We simply have far to high a human population density and general public use of our forests. I am sure most of us have encountered walkers, mountain bikers etc off the beaten track. I certainly meet them frequently.
3. You would need as many if not more Forestry rangers to control who was going where with what, when and shooting what.
4. Yes FLS pay rangers and contractors but the vast majority of that is recovered in carcass sales so net cost is close to zero. If you were paying people to manage a shooting public AND getting more browsing damage because numbers weren't controlled it would be more expensive for the country, not less.
Given SLE's 'peerless' organisational abilities, and armed with the insights you illustrate, you'd possibly conclude it may be possible for the former to arrange affairs in such a manner so as people do not end up being in the same blocks?
To answer these points in turn:
1) Cull returns can be monitored in such a manner as to nip any such practices in the bud. I'd be interested to learn of any evidence to support this assertion about lease holders not shooting sufficient does; my own experience of holding a lease with the predecessor of SLE resulted in my being one of a very small number nationwide of practitioners (be they paid or paying) to exceed their cull target;
2) See 1) above, this argument may be true of populous areas and woods in/around towns, but is by no means a universal situation through the NFE; at 5 miles out of town the lease I ran was quite a dog owners delight, and used more or less as a canine toilet, yet I managed to fulfill the cull targets without recourse to night or out of season shooting; I too encountered many a biker or dog walker, but the deer also were used to their passing through, and it was not that unusual to grass an animal shortly afterwards, sometimes less than ten minutes later, so I feel the point is somewhat moot and perhaps playing more to raise fears or anxiety in the potential hunter rather than the hunted, the latter take little notice of them;
3) Not if the superior organisational skills of SLE were put to the test, one WRM controls many permissions already, I see little difference in the same system being rolled out for any person being tasked with shooting a certain designated watershed or block; where there's
a will there's a way; left to the encumbent the will is lacking, not the way;
4) As I recall it cost the taxpayer north of £600 per animal shot to foot the total bill for the ranger force; I struggle to see quite how paying £120 per forest roe deer to a contractor and then sell it for less than a third this sum would square the circle? The 'If' in your last sentence carries some weight, what 'if' affairs were so arranged that your 'scary scenario' did not transpire, as is the case elsewhere? IIRC the budget for deer control in Scotland was iro £13million a few years back, according to the Senior WRM I was in conversation with. Would he have been lying? As to browsing damage, the roe preferred to starve in winter 2010/11 than eat any young sitka spruce shoots, the only thing above the snow line for weeks here. Perhaps you can quantify the browsing damage inflicted after the lockdown ends, it will be a great opportunity for you - my contention is that it's a convenient if much overstated scare tactic to justify the status quo, and does not stand up to scrutiny or on the ground evidence; in the latter years of my own tenure, we were experiencing natural regeneration of rowans, birch etc, which indicated to objective minds that there was no great threat of browsing damage to less preferred commercial crop species.
Nobody is looking to promote a 'Wild West in the woods' scenario, nor are they anticipating multiple instances of breaches of safety or dangerous practices with firearms, nor a scenario where three Rifles all unknown to one another are all racing in to shoot the same deer. Locally available and able practitioners could and should have a place in the scenario,
any aspiring help should be encouraged and where possible enabled, rather than discouraged, if the end result desired is fewer deer in the forest. I know that this may be of limited value to any potential practitioner travelling from afar, but given the daily commuting distances of some of the professionals of the part, there is surely room for the much vaunted
yet somewhat elusive 'social inclusivity' of locals who can help.
Where there's
a will, there's a way.
