That might be the case, but how would you know as what i discovered in Montana is they don't require you to report your success
So out of 17000 big game combo tags to NR hunters I wonder how many succeed and how many fail?
Are all states the same?
BTW we kill ( not harvest
) a huge amount of deer in the UK!
Agreed, I don't like the word harvest either, I was simply following the vernacular used in the conversation.
As far as the numbers, I have little faith in our states wildlife management agencies. But there is one thing the have to do that is based on numbers not opinions, count animals, issue permits, and then based on reported numbers come up with estimates. While they could surely be off by some, I don't think they are off enough to make a large disparity in reports. Forgive the cursory investigation, but google says the UK deer population is somewhere between 500K and 2 million. I don't know if that's true, but if it is hunters in just the states of AL, GA, NC, SC, report to kill off around that many every year. Of course these could be wrong, or off by a bit. I also have no idea if google is using all deer species for the UK or not. Whereas the numbers for the US states I looked up are for deer only, not counting elk, moose, or other animals.
Maybe, but individual recreational stalkers here in the UK probably shoot more deer in a year than an American hunter shoots in a lifetime. We have no bag limits. A "hobby" stalker here might easily shoot a hundred or more deer in a season, and is allowed to sell the venison. So there's plenty of opportunity to practice the butchery, and a financial incentive to get good at it.
From what I've seen / read online, it would appear that an individual hunter in the states rarely kills more than a couple of deer a year.
That may be the case, I know that after a year of not cleaning a deer, I find myself remembering things I already knew but forgot due to time passing. I usually clean and butcher 3-6 deer every year during our hunting season, and usually an elk or two as well. By the time I do the last one I feel like I'm back in a groove, just in time to forget again until next season
.
I taught my self butchery, first few attempts i ended up with alot of mince!!
Same here, I've moved to a lot of bone in cuts, as it seems less meat is wasted that way. But experience has helped.
I think we need to be carefull not to sound to critical of the op. Hats off to him for writing the articles he has.
Thanks for that, I hope you've enjoyed them. I appreciate this forum, as it seems there is quite a bit of knowledge here. I hope none of what I've said comes across as inflammatory towards UK stalkers, I enjoy the discussion.