Effect of night shooting on activity patterns

[Camdig]

Hmm, you obviously don't stalk/live where I do

Yes through out the Borders, I used to follow/involved in a Gun pack that run half a dozen beagle crosses with guns surrounding woods, the first thing out the woods would always be deer at a leisurely rate too.
Regularly up a valley in the Borders we would do plantations and Sika would drip out long before foxes.
The reference to thermal etc we lost count of the estates we would visit and the keeper would say no foxes here we use thermal bla bla bla and the day would finish with half a dozen, you can have the best thermal in the world but you still have to find them to shoot them, gun packs were very efficient especially on hill plantations.
It would be a useful tool just like night licenses.

 

[Tikka 270]

Yes through out the Borders, I used to follow/involved in a Gun pack that run half a dozen beagle crosses with guns surrounding woods, the first thing out the woods would always be deer at a leisurely rate too.
Regularly up a valley in the Borders we would do plantations and Sika would drip out long before foxes.
The reference to thermal etc we lost count of the estates we would visit and the keeper would say no foxes here we use thermal bla bla bla and the day would finish with half a dozen, you can have the best thermal in the world but you still have to find them to shoot them, gun packs were very efficient especially on hill plantations.
It would be a useful tool just like night licenses.

Been on plenty fox days with hounds and standing guns with shotguns and or rifles and never seen more than 1 fox shot for 20 folk participating over say 8 hours, you have the odd run out with a thermal and rifle with a thermal scope your are going to have more of an impact

 

[Camdig]

Been on plenty fox days with hounds and standing guns with shotguns and or rifles and never seen more than 1 fox shot for 20 folk participating over say 8 hours, you have the odd run out with a thermal and rifle with a thermal scope your are going to have more of an impact

Like I said just another useful tool that could be utilised, always plenty deer on fox drives.

 

[David Barker]

That's what they have been called since I started and I used to be invited on about a dozen different estates every year to do them over the south of England. So not a one off name used by one place.
I think they were called that because you don't drive the deer to be shot on the move but deer gently walked out areas normally over many thousands of acres to keep people shooting at static deer all day.
The last one i did was over roughly 8k acres.

Best practice i am sure uses this terminology.

 

[David Barker]

Night shooting if consistent in the same area will have the effect of changing when the deer eat. Herding deer will normally leave the area and learn quickly that this is not a safe place. Roe deer in my opinion are more territorial and it will drive them to feed at times that the lamps are not shinning. They will also become alert to any sounds sights they have heard in the past that have led to overs being shot. Deer are daft but have a real strong instinct for survival.

 

[Tim.243]

That's what they have been called since I started and I used to be invited on about a dozen different estates every year to do them over the south of England. So not a one off name used by one place.
I think they were called that because you don't drive the deer to be shot on the move but deer gently walked out areas normally over many thousands of acres to keep people shooting at static deer all day.
The last one i did was over roughly 8k acres.

Have heard of it before no different to tapping a wood or cover strip for foxes to pop out.

 

[slider]

Yes through out the Borders, I used to follow/involved in a Gun pack that run half a dozen beagle crosses with guns surrounding woods, the first thing out the woods would always be deer at a leisurely rate too.
Regularly up a valley in the Borders we would do plantations and Sika would drip out long before foxes.
The reference to thermal etc we lost count of the estates we would visit and the keeper would say no foxes here we use thermal bla bla bla and the day would finish with half a dozen, you can have the best thermal in the world but you still have to find them to shoot them, gun packs were very efficient especially on hill plantations.
It would be a useful tool just like night licenses.

not questioning the number of foxes or deer, its the number of walkers/cyclists thats the issue. I'm in the heart of Tweed Valley and the number of cyclists/walker/professional dog walkers makes day time stalking virtually impossible ( and you need to be on your toes at night too!!}

 

[Heym SR20]

Do you honestly think a driven hunt would work In the vast majority of Scotland???? There is hardy a corner where you don't see regular public access taking.

Absolutely I do think it would work. Central Germany has large amounts of public access. Beauty of driven / mass culling is that the land access only needs to be shut for a few days a year so really not an issue, as there are plenty of other areas where the public can go.

Very far removed from the UK where deer Management and public access have to go on all year round together.

 

[Heym SR20]

I’m not sure that’s true if your objective is population control, habitat maintenance or commercial venison production. In all of these, the largest expense will be labour, so that needs to be minimised. Man hours is absolutely critical in any operation that needs to work to a budget or generate a profit. Most available data indicate that the only deer stalking that currently generates enough revenue to cover the cost of the manpower involved is trophy stag/buck stalking, where the trophy attracts additional fees. Contract culling and the other forms of non-trophy stalking that require paying the stalker all run at a substantial loss to whoever is paying, precisely because they have to pay whoever is doing it enough to make it worth their while.

The continental driven hunt system works because (1) it is largely recreational, with most involved not billing for their time; (2) because deer density is mostly substantially lower than it is here; (3) because there is a far higher proportion of state owned land, and (4) because it’s centralised and controlled by the state in a way that we would find unacceptable. It also relies on having mass logistics in place to support it all - in a way that is simply not economically viable in the remoter parts of Scotland.

It is a system that works given the particular traditions, land ownership patterns and laws in the area. To move from what we have to a continental system would require a fundamental change to the law and to cultural attitudes. It’s actually not far off the philosophy underlying what NatureScot are attempting with their DMNROs - and look how well that’s going down.

Deer density might not be as high as UK but wild boar are in many places very high. Central Germany where I have been, on one Riviere of about 600 ha of which 200ha is mature commercial deciduous woodland blocks and the rest intensive arable the annual cull is about 60 boar, and 15 Roe deer. And that is pretty much the same across the whole local landscape.

And that sort of cull results in sustainable population of wild animals with manageable levels of damage to crops and trees. If the hunters in The Reviere do not keep the animals under control they have to pay for the damage to crops etc.

In the winter the driven hunts do the brunt of the cull through the woods. The rest of the year the hunters focus on the fields keeping the animals in the woods and away from the crops.

 

[Camdig]

not questioning the number of foxes or deer, its the number of walkers/cyclists thats the issue. I'm in the heart of Tweed Valley and the number of cyclists/walker/professional dog walkers makes day time stalking virtually impossible ( and you need to be on your toes at night too!!}

Yes dog walkers are the bane of my life with cyclists coming up behind.
There is not many places left in the Borders that you do not need to be on your toes 24hrs a day, I've witnessed some bizarre human behaviour through thermals.
With the relevant risk assessments and logistics in place I think Sika and Roe drives could be productive and the risks managed easily.

 

[slider]

Absolutely I do think it would work. Central Germany has large amounts of public access. Beauty of driven / mass culling is that the land access only needs to be shut for a few days a year so really not an issue, as there are plenty of other areas where the public can go.

Very far removed from the UK where deer Management and public access have to go on all year round together.

Shutting public access in our forests is problematic in itself. Just ask any forester undertaking felling works.
Members of the public regularly ignore "closed" signs and many foresters now have to employ banksmen to oversee entrance points. Even than they frequently fail to stop people accessing work areas and have to be in radio contact with machine operators who then need to pass operations until the MoP has passed through.

Or ask (car) rally operators who jump through multiple hoops to close off forests only to have to cancel stages when quad bikes are spotted on the tracks.

Closing forests all sounds good in theory but simply won't work in practice. I expect our Continental friends have a different attitude to access but there is a massive sense of entitlement in Scotland due to the (wrongly termed)right to roaming. That has got much worse since the COVID lock down and the Genie is well and truly out of the bottle.

 

[slider]

Yes dog walkers are the bane of my life with cyclists coming up behind.
There is not many places left in the Borders that you do not need to be on your toes 24hrs a day, I've witnessed some bizarre human behaviour through thermals.
With the relevant risk assessments and logistics in place I think Sika and Roe drives could be productive and the risks managed easily.

See my reply to Heym above

 

[Camdig]

Shutting public access in our forests is problematic in itself. Just ask any forester undertaking felling works.
Members of the public regularly ignore "closed" signs and many foresters now have to employ banksmen to oversee entrance points. Even than they frequently fail to stop people accessing work areas and have to be in radio contact with machine operators who then need to pass operations until the MoP has passed through.

Or ask (car) rally operators who jump through multiple hoops to close off forests only to have to cancel stages when quad bikes are spotted on the tracks.

Closing forests all sounds good in theory but simply won't work in practice. I expect our Continental friends have a different attitude to access but there is a massive sense of entitlement in Scotland due to the (wrongly termed)right to roaming. That has got much worse since the COVID lock down and the Genie is well and truly out of the bottle.

You would be right in the huge forestry like Glentress, Lady Urd etc where they are very busy, not all deer live and forestry plenty deer resident in shelter belts and smaller blocks and would probably be more productive.
If pheasants can be driven through out the country deer could be too.

 

[nun_hunter]

One place a I shoot has a wood that's about 80 acres but probably only 250-300m wide. It is very old unmanaged woodland with some overgrown coppice. It's thick to stalk through and the combination of fallen branches and twigs mean stalking is very very slow if you want to get into a group of fallow without being detected.

If there were 2-3 guns at one end shooting across the wood (it's a valley so good backstops) and had a small group walking towards them you could much more effectively cull a number of fallow than you ever would stalking it on foot.

It wouldn't need to be deer charging and leaping though the woods as expected on a continental drive but slowly pushing them through towards waiting guns.

This approach could be replicated on numerous pieces of ground. It won't work everywhere but with some considerations it would work in a lot more places than some here believe.

 

[slider]

One place a I shoot has a wood that's about 80 acres but probably only 250-300m wide. It is very old unmanaged woodland with some overgrown coppice. It's thick to stalk through and the combination of fallen branches and twigs mean stalking is very very slow if you want to get into a group of fallow without being detected.

If there were 2-3 guns at one end shooting across the wood (it's a valley so good backstops) and had a small group walking towards them you could much more effectively cull a number of fallow than you ever would stalking it on foot.

It wouldn't need to be deer charging and leaping though the woods as expected on a continental drive but slowly pushing them through towards waiting guns.

This approach could be replicated on numerous pieces of ground. It won't work everywhere but with some considerations it would work in a lot more places than some here believe.

Is it legal? I honestly don't know.
If it is why isn't it happening?

 

[nun_hunter]

Is it legal? I honestly don't know.
If it is why isn't it happening?

My understanding is that unless you are using more than 2 dogs or a vehicle it's legal.

 

[Camdig]

My understanding is that unless you are using more than 2 dogs or a vehicle it's legal.

Just had a little look and it appears in Scotland you need a licence from Nature Scot if driving deer with a vehicle which is kind of odd, you don't need a licence if driving to killed on foot.
Am going to guess it will come down to the person/people with the lease/shooting rights and Britain's idea of traditional stalking and in alot of cases will generate more income than they do damage when stalking is being sold, I can remember stories (i wasn't born) of Roe drives in the 70s where roe were pretty much treated as vermin and driven to standing shotguns.

 

[Nickb]

I can remember stories (i wasn't born) of Roe drives in the 70s where roe were pretty much treated as vermin and driven to standing shotguns.

Roe drives were very common at the end of the pheasant season , foxes and roe were cleared up at the same time and they were usually very effective.