Shooting Times - culling constrained by game shooting

[Puds]

One of the estates I stalk has a pheasant shoot, and I’m restricted on where I stalk when birds have gone to wood and during the shooting season to reduce disturbance to the birds.
I don’t mind as it’s 3.5k acres so there’s still a few bits I can cover, and as it’s the keeper who offered me the stalking for free I can’t really complain when he asks me to take his livelihood into consideration.

It does mean I have to absolutely hammer the muntjac come Feb/March before cover gets back up, but that’s not too much of a hardship.

 

[Erik Hamburger]

From the article below in ShootingUK / Shooting Times:

"Many estates or farms restrict times that deer stalkers can get on the ground, condensing most of the culling to February and March once the more important pastime for the landowners has finished. "

In your experience, to what extent do you think this is true?

The challenges of modern land management - ShootingUK

The requirements of landowners and the desires of Government organisations can mean that executing a cull is often tricky business

www.shootinguk.co.uk

The statement is true, and the financial reality behind it explains it: Game shoots bring in more money than Stalking.
Also, I have encountered quite a few Keepers who are terrified that a single Stalker 'disturbs' the Birds, and a shot anywhere near a Pen is sacrilege. This while the same Keepers are foxing with rifles at night, and racing over the Estate in quads, making a hell of a racket, feeding and repairing and checking and dogging-in.

 

[243 fallow]

The statement is true, and the financial reality behind it explains it: Game shoots bring in more money than Stalking.
Also, I have encountered quite a few Keepers who are terrified that a single Stalker 'disturbs' the Birds, and a shot anywhere near a Pen is sacrilege. This while the same Keepers are foxing with rifles at night, and racing over the Estate in quads, making a hell of a racket, feeding and repairing and checking and dogging-in.

The keepers do all the things you mentioned because it’s their job, most keepers won’t sit outside a loaded up pen with a large calibre rifle waiting to shoot a fox, likely hood would be with a 22rf, birds get used to our daily routines and will often be waiting on the rides to be fed or when they hear the quad fly in to get food, dogging in is done on the boundaries.

 

[25 Sharps]

From the article below in ShootingUK / Shooting Times:

"Many estates or farms restrict times that deer stalkers can get on the ground, condensing most of the culling to February and March once the more important pastime for the landowners has finished. "

In your experience, to what extent do you think this is true?

The challenges of modern land management - ShootingUK

The requirements of landowners and the desires of Government organisations can mean that executing a cull is often tricky business

www.shootinguk.co.uk

Very true

 

[User00038]

So, accepting the finances re game shooting and the day to day operational factors for keepering (all as described above), in areas of high numbers of fallow or red, do you find that restricting culling til Feb & Mar is an obstacle to effective deer population management or is meeting an appropriate doe target reasonably achievable?

 

[Oldstalker]

This is a fascinating thread and there is much sense written in all of the above.

When I stalked in S Cumbria and N Lancs it was on a series of estates with enormously varied sizes of shoots from full time keepered (major element of estate income) to keepered syndicates and self-help syndicates [also hill ground farmed but not keepered and a syndicate shot deerpark]. I was very fortunate in both the owners and the keepers I met.

To start with the estate with the largest shoot it went through three quite distinct phases as successive keepers intensified the shoot to make it larger, and more important in revenue terms to the estate. The last keeper was the most interesting in that he encouraged children and dogs under control around his rearing field for the simple reason there was so much public access, disturbance, (including a major RSPB reserve with 6 figures of visitors per annum wholly within the estate). Additionally there was a diminution in the area available to deer as "stooging areas" where they could have a greater chance of an undisturbed life [A clay pigeon shoot area became a paint-ball and clay pigeon complex; elsewhere a cross-country jumping ride/circuit was established on another wooded hill.

Communication was critical to his and my activities and I never stalked on his ground in the 36 hours before a shoot. Additionally I would try very hard not to drag birds seeking food behind the car away from a pen at the wrong time of day. Neither he nor I were worried by birds getting up and gliding 30-60 yards as was often the case if I walked with the dogs or drove past areas with concentrations of birds. The total cull on that estate was usually around 30-36 roe, less than 10 fallow and 15-25 red per annum until latterly when more woodland work was being undertaken and a significantly increased cull of reds was taken up to 45 per annum. I was permitted (and encouraged) to stalk throughout the season. Foxes, when encountered, were shot but I did not shoot many the keeper accounting for a couple of dozen per annum, usually after a "dump". Consequently I shot either up to 6 in a year or almost none.

On the other 5 estates, all of which were shot to a lesser or greater extent - even if it was only some of the plantations around the margins of the hill ground, or an annual "armed walk" over the heather ground for grouse, again I never stalked in the 36 hours before the morning of a shoot day. I was never accused of disturbing birds to the detriment of the shoot but the dogs I had then were genuinely well behaved, and the paying guests did as they were told.

When, on the main shooting estate I was asked to cull some reds out of season (twice in about 25 years) on a dairy farm meadow a letter of request and authority was always forthcoming from the owner. As I say I was fortunate; but I also always ensured that the owner, agent and keeper knew what was afoot on a (deer) season by season basis. Truthful communication matters.

So also does cooperation; if I was on hand to help unload a proven (read feed) wagon I did so willingly. Reporting where foxes were smelled, clearing tracks of fallen branches, poaching patrols were all a part of the seasonal routine of cooperation. Shooting and stalking can co-exist in parallel not in series with very little detriment either enterprise on the estate but I was always very aware that my monetary contribution to the estate was a little over 10% of that of the shoot.

 

[Oldstalker]

So, accepting the finances re game shooting and the day to day operational factors for keepering (all as described above), in areas of high numbers of fallow or red, do you find that restricting culling til Feb & Mar is an obstacle to effective deer population management or is meeting an appropriate doe target reasonably achievable?

In broad terms I would agree. On the "low ground" I stalked with both red and fallow present it would have been a real problem to take the female/young cull in February only, later in February and March when the statutory season changed (although I usually stopped at the end of February as I had "through the season" access).

On an estate adjacent to the full-time keepered estate mentioned above, which was almost exclusively populated by fallow (there were a few roe but not many) and from which an annual cull of 15-25 fallow was taken that would absolutely not have been possible without spreading the stalking effort throughout the open season.

I am sure many on this forum would concur that it becomes very difficult to cull more than 20% of a deer population and the greater the number over 20% the more careful one has to be. It is near impossible to do it solely with paying guests.