The answer?

[Dorset Guy]

The more I think about this, the more issues I can think of that crop up.

As everyone knows, through anecdotal or factual evidence, population numbers of deer are booming throughout England across all 6 species. Biodiversity is in steep decline. High chance of RTAs, urbanisation of deer etc etc etc. Of course some areas are worse than others but what's the answer long term?

- Landscape wide deer stalking & collaboration - what this looks like in practise is a whole other thread revisited.
- More stalkers with more neighboring land? Raises the whole issue of stalkers having a sub hobby of gaining perms for fun and many other questions.
- Venison becoming a more staple diet vs 'high quality cuisine' - new thread potential...
- Easier access to processing carcasses/higher prices...cue another thread and multiple past threads...
- Lengthening of legal hours? Easier night license approval? Cue new thread discussion/revisiting old threads
- Higher regard of the issue from FC/government
- Linked to above- more grant funding initiatives for landowners?

In my mind, some pretty drastic changes need to be made otherwise baseline norms of what a 'healthy' looking woodland among multiple other negatives are going to become ever more apparent.

Anyone know the answer? Potential of finding gold at the end of a rainbow easier and more likely? Natural England care to comment?

 

[Norfolk Deer Search]

The more I think about this, the more issues I can think of that crop up.

As everyone knows, through anecdotal or factual evidence, population numbers of deer are booming throughout England across all 6 species. Biodiversity is in steep decline. High chance of RTAs, urbanisation of deer etc etc etc. Of course some areas are worse than others but what's the answer long term?

- Landscape wide deer stalking & collaboration - what this looks like in practise is a whole other thread revisited.
- More stalkers with more neighboring land? Raises the whole issue of stalkers having a sub hobby of gaining perms for fun and many other questions.
- Venison becoming a more staple diet vs 'high quality cuisine' - new thread potential...
- Easier access to processing carcasses/higher prices...cue another thread and multiple past threads...
- Lengthening of legal hours? Easier night license approval? Cue new thread discussion/revisiting old threads
- Higher regard of the issue from FC/government
- Linked to above- more grant funding initiatives for landowners?

In my mind, some pretty drastic changes need to be made otherwise baseline norms of what a 'healthy' looking woodland among multiple other negatives are going to become ever more apparent.

Anyone know the answer? Potential of finding gold at the end of a rainbow easier and more likely? Natural England care to comment?

I wouldn’t hurt your head thinking about it all, all been done before 100’s of times before!

The job is buggered just a matter of hanging on the best you can.

 

[Klenchblaize]

#1 = "Easier access to processing (disposal of) carcasses".

Doesn't require another thread to be convinced that far more beasts would be culled if the Stalker could be assured of getting rid of the beast/s.

K

 

[Tim.243]

The more I think about this, the more issues I can think of that crop up.

As everyone knows, through anecdotal or factual evidence, population numbers of deer are booming throughout England across all 6 species. Biodiversity is in steep decline. High chance of RTAs, urbanisation of deer etc etc etc. Of course some areas are worse than others but what's the answer long term?

- Landscape wide deer stalking & collaboration - what this looks like in practise is a whole other thread revisited.
- More stalkers with more neighboring land? Raises the whole issue of stalkers having a sub hobby of gaining perms for fun and many other questions.
- Venison becoming a more staple diet vs 'high quality cuisine' - new thread potential...
- Easier access to processing carcasses/higher prices...cue another thread and multiple past threads...
- Lengthening of legal hours? Easier night license approval? Cue new thread discussion/revisiting old threads
- Higher regard of the issue from FC/government
- Linked to above- more grant funding initiatives for landowners?

In my mind, some pretty drastic changes need to be made otherwise baseline norms of what a 'healthy' looking woodland among multiple other negatives are going to become ever more apparent.

Anyone know the answer? Potential of finding gold at the end of a rainbow easier and more likely? Natural England care to comment?

Who will fill the older time served stalkers/fox shooters/pigeon shooters as I see a big trend in people bypassing the way to gain valuable experience of what a lot of us started of with an air rifle number 3 garden gun .410 at 14 club .22lr >
Nope straight to a deer rifle few trips swap some cash for a stalk book a course then start asking to tag along.
Duck me just sitting quiet catching a few small rudd at the farm pond was a lesson in waiting for deer.
Shame it has gone like that.

 

[Hazlett]

I agree with the OP on this. Pretty drastic changes are needed even to halt the increase in numbers in those areas where deer are basically out of control. I only have much experience regarding areas of fallow in the south and east of England – so my comments just relate to those areas. And it’s so complex just trying to find solutions to that problem, let alone combine with the other species and their regional distributions.

Generally, I don’t think that deer stalkers are the right people to be making decisions for the effective management of deer. It’s all about thriving numbers of deer on their ‘perms’ for so many stalkers. Getting the landscape view needs a complete overview and co-operation between most landowners and, as has been seen time and again, that is not particularly easy to achieve and maintain over the 10 or 20 years needed to achieve meaningful change.

Bringing on more, younger stalkers for the future is an issue and around me, there are countless old timer stalkers who still hold on to their permissions with what seems to be almost paranoia. They aren’t following @Ratel’s example of bringing in enthusiastic, fit, strong, younger people to help and set the path for ongoing good future management. So the difficulty of extraction on steeper or wetter ground means that they aren’t shooting deer there and are setting up sanctuaries within their own ground.

I think that the freedom for deer to be shot, or not, as the landowner/stalker chooses is a huge contributor to poor landscape management of deer, whether in an area of high or low numbers.

The FC is the closest we have to an organization taking responsibility for the nation’s deer management. The problem with the FC is that its remit is woodland. They are not in a position to do much about deer across the rest of the landscape – which for fallow means that they’re going nowhere. Alongside this, the accepted methods of assessing deer impacts are solely focussed on woodland and they're not even actually measuring impacts. Until there is a totally revised proper method that really looks at all the actual impacts, across the whole landscape, looking at financial, environmental, carbon etc impacts, there isn’t the persuasive drive to get landowners on board.

Increasing the market for venison is obviously a massive obstacle and it’s a shame that the BQWV idea wasn’t developed with more comprehensive input. But this is associated with the responsibility for deer being dumped on the FC. Coming back to the impact assessment – without real information about what deer are costing the country (in various ways), Defra and the Govt aren’t going to contribute seriously to this.

The only way forward that I can envisage achieving any successful change is if we have a governmental organization that holds over-arching responsibility for the nation’s deer across all landscapes. Once again, I can’t see that happening until we have a complete overhaul of deer impact assessment and meaningful figures to present.

 

[VSS]

I agree with the OP on this. Pretty drastic changes are needed even to halt the increase in numbers in those areas where deer are basically out of control. I only have much experience regarding areas of fallow in the south and east of England – so my comments just relate to those areas. And it’s so complex just trying to find solutions to that problem, let alone combine with the other species and their regional distributions.

Generally, I don’t think that deer stalkers are the right people to be making decisions for the effective management of deer. It’s all about thriving numbers of deer on their ‘perms’ for so many stalkers. Getting the landscape view needs a complete overview and co-operation between most landowners and, as has been seen time and again, that is not particularly easy to achieve and maintain over the 10 or 20 years needed to achieve meaningful change.

Bringing on more, younger stalkers for the future is an issue and around me, there are countless old timer stalkers who still hold on to their permissions with what seems to be almost paranoia. They aren’t following @Ratel’s example of bringing in enthusiastic, fit, strong, younger people to help and set the path for ongoing good future management. So the difficulty of extraction on steeper or wetter ground means that they aren’t shooting deer there and are setting up sanctuaries within their own ground.

I think that the freedom for deer to be shot, or not, as the landowner/stalker chooses is a huge contributor to poor landscape management of deer, whether in an area of high or low numbers.

The FC is the closest we have to an organization taking responsibility for the nation’s deer management. The problem with the FC is that its remit is woodland. They are not in a position to do much about deer across the rest of the landscape – which for fallow means that they’re going nowhere. Alongside this, the accepted methods of assessing deer impacts are solely focussed on woodland and they're not even actually measuring impacts. Until there is a totally revised proper method that really looks at all the actual impacts, across the whole landscape, looking at financial, environmental, carbon etc impacts, there isn’t the persuasive drive to get landowners on board.

Increasing the market for venison is obviously a massive obstacle and it’s a shame that the BQWV idea wasn’t developed with more comprehensive input. But this is associated with the responsibility for deer being dumped on the FC. Coming back to the impact assessment – without real information about what deer are costing the country (in various ways), Defra and the Govt aren’t going to contribute seriously to this.

The only way forward that I can envisage achieving any successful change is if we have a governmental organization that holds over-arching responsibility for the nation’s deer across all landscapes. Once again, I can’t see that happening until we have a complete overhaul of deer impact assessment and meaningful figures to present.

Agree with all that you say, apart from your final paragraph.
The suggestion that there should be a government organisation that holds over-arching responsibility for the nation's deer across all landscapes is something I would resist with the last breath in my body!

 

[Hazlett]

I'll take that as a win then - I got 6 paragraphs past you!

And I'm with you in that I don't want a govt body taking responsibility at all - I just can't see much change happening without it though.