Shooting calves

[lochty]

How well a calf would survive depends on a number of factors. Out in the hills, it's life expectancy would be considerably less than in woods, for example. Especially with a winter like the last one, where many adults perished. Also, how far on in it's development it is. In a typical red deer herd, you will see a number of well grown calves, as well as a number of poor ones (as someone else said). This will also impact on the following year's breeding, where a number of animals will come into oestrus at 15 months old, whilst the poorer ones, which have not reached threshold weight for conception, will not. Personally, having stalked into a group, where there is the chance of only one shot, I would always take a calf in poor condition to avoid orphaning anything. Lastly, I prefer the term "juvenile" which indicates an animal under 12 months old. After this, they can be considered an adult

 

[Turkish]

I agree with Lochty.
For example in fallow. Any orphan - even in a park with winter feed - will not make a good animal in the following years. bucks will invariably be poor developers, low in body weight and stature.
Does - due to poor weigh gain during the suckling period - will be late developers. In turn not coming into season at the right time and subsequently, when covered later in the season , producing a late born fawn the following year. And so the cycle goes on.
Fawns, calves , kids - of either sex - should be considered as part of the cull before the winter months. This would be on welfare grounds in my book.

If you are a recreational stalker , and have the choice to leave both mother and young, then go ahead. When it is your job, hard decisions have to be made.

 

[User00025]

With Sika, shooting the hind first will leave a calf that in some areas at three months old will survive. It's all down to calf size and available food and a weak calf with low energy food will succumb. I always took weak calves rather than good ones and tended to shoot the hind first in any small group (say 3 or 4 animals). I never tended to shoot any animals in a large group as they tend to wise up very quickly and shun open areas.

 

[Dexter]

Sorry, I should expand on that bald statement, as Baguio's definition is the most nearly correct, IMO.

The sector of a herd known as "followers" are young animals that are independent, but not yet productive themselves. So, while the 12-24 months definition holds good for a dairy herd where heifers calve down at 2 years old, I don't think that precise age bracket can be applied to all herding species. Some will become independent at a greater or lesser age, and some will reach sexual maturity earlier or later. Compare, for example, the fast development of a pig, with the slow development of an elephant.

The term "followers" isn't applied to very young animals simply because they follow (and are wholly dependent on) their mothers. These would be calves, fawns, kids or whatever description is appropriate to the species.

However, I don't think anyone would be misunderstood if, having seen, for example, a fallow doe with a well-grown (yet still dependant) fawn they reported having seen a doe with a follower.

Thank you VSS.
We don't split the term 'follower' down into whether it came into uterus or not as that would require another term. We should simply be considering it to be a young hind that's following it's dam which may well have now produced another calf. Therefore we have a hind, calf and follower stood in front of us. Shooting the follower will definitely not result in a welfare issue. The size difference between the 3 is quite obvious when they stood together too.