Thread: Herd management and Playing our part

A private conversation thread prompted me to put this forward and to help keep it at the forefront of our hunting and gathering lifestyles.

The short discussion involved shooting a stag that was carrying a large number of hinds. The first response was “I hope you shot some hinds”. The answer “Yes, shot three and gave them to the farmer”
This follows on from a deep and meaningful late night hut conversation, over a few straight vodkas, with a older Canadian gentleman I had taken on a hunting trip into the Doon in the late eighties.
He was lamenting the downturn in trophy head quality despite good animal numbers. I put it to him that maybe they need to start culling hinds and saving some of the better bucks for the future.
Having come out of the deer recovery industry in a small way, hinds were considered sacrosanct and deer numbers were low but I had seen the ravages of high deer numbers and with an established population and no management, numbers would escalate with poor quality outcomes both in trophy potential and having a reasonable population size to sustain our need to keep the freezer full. This was where my thinking was heading to back then.

It’s the latter that’s the current issue. I’m as much at fault in this as many others and it stems from our desire to utilise what we shoot and not be wasteful. I abhor killing for the sake of killing and hate waste even more but put that aside when it comes to reducing pest populations such as magpies, rabbits, goats etc. We need to carry that over to deer as well.

I’m very fortunate to have secured a top class trophy Red back in the nineties when it was very difficult to do so and one that I will probably never beat given it’s unique character and size so not a big motivator for me these days. From now, I will make a point of only taking red hinds for meat and shooting any I see. It won’t be big numbers but a few by all of us will make a difference for the future.

Cheers all and have at it with your thoughts.