I have just registered for my DMQ Level2 and I am looking for either a training course or a "reliable" accredited witness within a days travel of Shropshire. Residential courses are out of the question at present although may be an option sometime in the near future. Cost is an issue as once I have completed it, my eldest wants to register as well.

Lisa

Lisa,
contact: Peter Watson
Deer Initiative
01691 718606
He will be able to give you a list of accredited witnesses, and any courses that are being run in your area.

Griff

Lisa,

Along with Peter Watson (who must be fairly local to you looking at that telephone number) you could try David Stretton. He runs various courses at Donnington Park and has a very good reputation. He also produces a very good A4 leaflet with colour photos aimed at people doing the Level Two concerning carcass handling and inspectionaspects which is the main stumbling block for most people. I don't have his number here but can find it if you are interested.

You might want to look at :
http://www.deer-uk.com

This is quite a good free site and they also sell a software training package; I have not seen it myself so can't comment directly.

Regards

Peter

Thank you gentlemen,

It is the carcass inspection aspect I really need to brush up on. Have either of you gentleman done the Level Two and if so, just how stringent are the accredited witnesses when they assess you?

I think I will be ok on most aspects of carcass handling, but I do have trouble finding lymph nodes on the messenteric chain�

Lisa

Lisa,

I completed the Level 2 about 18 months ago and will be resistering myself as an accredited witness sometime in the spring.

The couple of people who I know who are accredited witnesses could best be described as being constructive rather than obstructive when it came to assessing candidates. I have however heard a few horror stories but these have been about people who are approaching things from a strictly commercial perspective and are trying to drag the most money out of the candidates...this commercialism is something that is blighting deerstalking at the moment..

Peter

Gentlemen

Would you please explain what DMQ Level2 is

The headline NVQ training doesn't tell you that much is this some sort of geurilla operating in England or what

/ JOHAN

Hi Fawn
there are several videos available based on the level 2. A video that is good but pre level 2 is the forestry commission one called Processing and inspection of wild deer.It is quite comprehensive and goes beyond the requirement for level 2. But you will probably want to learn more as you go along and it is quite good for refering back to.You could possibly get it through Alice Holt the southern H.Q.(Engl.)for the forestry commission.
As for level two go to your nearest BDS branch and see if anyone can help prepare you for your accredited witness stalk.( many people are willing to help for free ) Also you only need one accredited witness stalk the other two can be by reliable /credible fellow stalkers. Any assessment center worth its salt will check with those witnesses in relation to the stalk and what was done or not as the case may be. I would not be worried about it, the main objective is saftey and being able to recognise any health problems the deer may have that could enter the food chain. Good luck I am sure Pete W will be able to help you.

Lisa,
the list of accredited witnesses will all change in the new year,anyone who has not had re-training will not be able to act as an accredited witness!
Both myself and Tread are aw's, and Tread is an assesor/external verifior for DMQ.
Dave Stretton comes under Donnington Deer Management.

Pete,
there are some horror stories floating about,about some aw's but these are now being dealt with and are being removed off the list.

Griff

Johan.
"Deer Management Qualification"

It is a qualification that is becoming very prevalent in deer stalking in the U.K.
Land agents like the Forestry Commission insist on level 2 for you to have any kind of a Deer Stalking Lease.

Griff

Kind Sirs,

Thank you all again for your help. It is very refreshing to recieve help and information so freely. I only have 250 acres of stalking in Shropshire, but it appears that as griff says if I wish to keep this I will need to hold my Level Two as landagents and owners become ever more liability concious.

I will wait for the new list to come out and in the mean time I will try to get hold of the Forestry video and the booklet from David Stretton. I have spoken to David briefly at (I think) the Deer Fair in Oxford a couple of years back so I probably have his telephone number here.

I hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year; with those out of the way I can start again on my somewhat neglected Roe doe cull.

Thank you again for all your help,

Lisa

PS

Peter,

Where abouts in North Wales are you and what do you stalk up there? I am guessing Fallow or do you have Roe up there now?

[ 01-02-2003, 01:33: Message edited by: FAWN ]

Fawn,

Have you got your 'pack' yet? DMQ level 2 is based on building up a 'portfolio' of experience. It is possible to do it on 3 accredited stalks but it is nice to have some extra depth.

If you haven't allready kept them start keeping game dealer receipts for carcasses, getting referances from landowners, gamedealers etc.

You need to be prepared to do it all yourself on the day. I have read of witnesses taking candidates to the deer, pointing out which one to shoot etc but this is not what was intended.

First impressions count. If you walk into the stalkers house having left your rifle in the car and don't have the bolt in your hand you will strictly speaking have failed!

Good Luck

PS I agree with Pete E about the commercalism, I would reccomend whoever you choose is UKAPDM (Stalking Magazine)

Lisa,

I completed my DSC2 last year in Shropshire as it happens. The Forestry Commission based in Mortimer Forest in Ludlow have at least one assessor - John Speed. Very helpful. David Stretton is Chairman of our BDS branch over here in the East Midlands and his training is excellent also. My daughter (18) just did her DSC1 with him.

Good luck

Nick

Folks, as good a thread as any for airing a possibly contentious point of view!

My concern with the DMQ as a replacement for the earlier courses, revolves around the word used in a previous post........ commercialization!

It strikes me that the very people we wish to attract towards responsible and humane deer control methodology are the ones most unlikely to be in a position to stump up the not inconsiderable costs of the courses.

Youngsters and Gamekeepers are our future - I strongly feel that training courses should be condensed and focussed on the issue. The additional costs that need to be met on the journey to a 'nationally recognised qualification'I feel are proving to be a major disincentive to many potential stalkers.

Do not feel that I am adverse to training - on the contrary. It is just that from a �70 two day course we are now looking at the thick end of �270 and four days of training. I for one, cannot see an improvement in the end result over the old NSCC. All of the required administration, support materials and assessment costs money.

Additionally, in going down a formal qualification route, I feel we are opening a Pandora's box for the future.

Already, local police licensing depts are sending non rifle shooters on a course that was never designed to be a rifle handling A-Z. The riflecraft module of the course was intended to examine proficiency - not train to a standard! Now the FLO's seem to feel completing the DMQ proves suitability to handle and possess a firearm. Great, they can offload culpability for wrongly issuing a license to someone else!

Consider the potential result - following a firearms accident, a competent Barrister could prove 'inadequate training' in riflecraft in court. In today's society, that equates to a claim for damages against our volunteer trainers!

Which organization will be able to afford the professional indemnity insurance fee required? Who will end up bearing the increased costs?

Whilst applauding the theory of standardised training - I also fear that mandatory testing will be the result.

This is not currently required in the UK - a country which has currently lower firearms accident rates than any other country in the EU. A statistic that seems to make the benefits of expensive mandatory testing appear dubious.

What are your thoughts?

For the record, I am not only a member of BASC, I also serve on a regional committee of the BDS. I passed the NSCC 8 years ago - continuing with further Deer management training, culminating with a successful pass of the BDS Adv. Stalkers Course a couple years later.

Rgds to all. IanF

Ian,

I agree to an extent. I really don't think that DMQ should have been set up in such a fashion as to provide instant success from expensive residential courses. A good time limit between stalks and more credence to experience would prevent that.

I have a real beef that someone could go to level 2 direct from level 1 on the basis of a weekend, 3 accredited stalks, 3 grallochs and �200.

I do however want the future of my past time guarded. To that end I don't believe the answer lies in numbers but in professional practice. DMQ flawed as it is probably helps to some extent in that regard.

....as I mentioned - I am not adverse to training - for the very reason you mention!

Rgds Ian

Hello all
I am very concerned by the NVQ's that are now being almost demanded by some forces FEO's for the grant of a cert with a deer condition. I know that it can't be a bad thing for the sport and the quarry but I also think that it is just another hurdle to negotiate for the diminishing ranks of shooters. I think that they should be available for those with the interest to acquire certain knowledge but not a mandatory thing. How did we ever get by without them before? If you are careful and thoughtful you shouldn�t have any accident and if one does occur that�s what you have insurance for.
fortune

1894,
I was led to believe that insurance was mandatory if you have a lease from any of the land agents?
We certainly have been asked to provide evidence of insurance when leasing.

We also insist that on level 2 you have insurance, only a fool would shoot without insurance!!!

Griff

1894
this could prove a very interesting debate. I pin my colours to that of DMQ for many reasons. But most of all something is better than nothing and Rome as we know was not built in a day.My occupation is involved in teaching forestry and I marry it with teaching wild deer mgt courses (level 1 and 2). I would dearly love to say that at �200/person I can make a profit for my employers unfortunately not. I need in the region of 9-10 students to break even on our course. People forget the costs from registration, secterial, hire of rooms,photocopying, bds books , targets, timber for target butts,snacks and beverages etc and the biggest killer is wages for the lecturers even though we do have some guest speakers on our course. You can make it cheaper but as pointed out you then could lack in quality.
As for the time limit for level 1 we run courses in April,July and Aug with limits to 15 people per course and level 2 from Nov. till end march all dependant on numbers etc. That could give people 2 months to gain alot of experience. Some manage it, many dont, but most people have years of experience before coming.Think driving test, some people reach the standard in minimal lessons others have 2-3 attempts with many lessons. I have met and tested people who were so called professionals but did not make the mark by a long stretch. But like anything in this world quality,sincerity and professionalism varies if it does not come up to standard report it.Each course must be responsible to a assessment center and each assessment center is inspected annually and must reach certain criteria to keep its status. Complaints will be investigated, rumors wont be!
The differance between the nscc and our present options is you never had to set eyes on a deer let alone shoot one under the nscc even in the advanced qualification.Also for information the level 1 and 2 DSC are not NVQ's there are NVQ's in existance on stalking but through Lantra (formerly ATB )the difference basically is recognition by gov. educational authorities. I hope this will spark up some more debate amongst many of you.

DMQ serves a purpose in that it enjoys the seal of approval of the UK establishment. That means it helps legitimise our sporting activities in the eyes of an increasingly hostile media led public perception.
It's sad I agree but the primary motivation for signing up to it.(I too have recently registered for DSC2 purely as a defensive measure)
In practical terms I feel no one should be able to shoot a wild animal without a trained dog in attendance. That should apply equally to deer, wildfowl, game, pigeon/rabbit shooting. That would be a great stride in making any qualification of real practical value.

It seems to me that DSC2 has been dogged by a number of problems, and the two most common are a very high cost, and variation of standards between witnesses.Plus of course a massive lack of communication between HQ and the AWs.

If one looks at the second statement first, what is often overlooked is that it is a test - a demonstration by an individual that he has reached a given standard, effectively in carcass inspection and preparation. (By the time you do level 2 level one should have sorted out the shooting and follow up aspect.) The point is that you have your deer, you have a knife and you get on with it unaided. It isn't, or shouldn't be, an assisted teach-in at that stage.

So, to get to that standard, and no one ought to imply that there is only one way to dress a deer - just that it is done and inspected such that it meets the game meat regulations - you need to have tackeld several deer previously. This is where the cost comes in. It can take several stalks before you have gained sufficient facility. People's daily rates vary, but I would think that the average person is going to have to tackle 4 or 5 deer before they can do the business unaided, and at a success rate of 1:2 1:3 outings one is looking at around �4-�500 to get there, spread over time. It may be different with hill deer, but for the man in the woodlands shooting selectively that is around the run of it.

There are perhaps two ways round that, since it is the carcass prep that's the stumbling block. If people are shooting deer in any quantity, there is nothing to stop you either practising or being tested on a deer which someone else has shot. If you can latch onto a park cull as a heaver and puller, you'll get the practise in a single day (you are allowed to shoot one (or 2?)in a park. The other, if one is after practise is to dress animals which other stalkers have shot on ordinary outings. I have done that quite regularly for people - I'm not so keen on the park bit, because one has a pile to do and one wants to get on with it. Nor will I let others shoot in the parks, because again one is always desperately short of time. Depends on the way people go about it - some pick away at park deer (and they may well permit or want gralloching assistance). Some go for the very few big hits to minimise stress amongst the deer. (Perhaps I'm missing out on a commercial opportunity there, and reds are certainly a lot easier than fallow).

The other problem has been variations between the standards of witnesses. There have certainly been cases where people have gained their level 2 in an astonishingly short time after others have refused to sign them off. Perhaps some of these people have been very good teachers, in which case all credit to them. I do not see that this re-briefing will solve that, nor will the increased level of internal verification. At the end of the day we badly need, I believe, a system of practical verification. One student in 100? is hauled into a park by one of the verifiers, and off he goes - he can gralloch, he can identify the glands etc OK. If he can't the AW (not the student)should have some questions to answer? If AWs knew that there was a good chance that one of their signatures might be checked externally and rigorously, I suspect that a lot of the - i was going to use the word "abuses", but I think "irregularities" might be safer.

There is another issue - why do level 2 at all?

Many people are asking for level 1, not 2 for leases, which is a good reason for doing level 1, though as we all know, you can pass level one without ever having seen a live deer in your life. So much for practicalities! But level 2? Game dealers are subject to inspection, and carcases for export are subject to some inspection, at licensed export houses. They are quite quick enough to reject carcases.Equally it is not as if the stalkers inspection carries any weight: the fact is that the only one that counts is the vets inspection.

As an aside, the increasing demand for carcases containing the pluck has led directly to a reduction in standards. Rather than extract immediately and bag & tag, many carcases come in 1/2 intact after a few days in the chiller, and pretty revolting and smelly they are too. Not that is a level2 issue - most English dealers don't want the pluck unless they are expeorting whole, and most are not.

So unless one has a burning interest, is it worth shelling out the extra money for level 2? Especially as the costs are likely to increase. Anyone who has dealt with the new forms, and the requirement to write everything out in longhand will know exactly what I mean.

As someone mentioned above, there is a whole cottage industry set up on this level 2, and I question to what purpose. It seems to me that we are in grave danger of elaborating something quite simple to the point of ridicule, so that videos containing inexactitudes of cosmic proportions (specificaly dealing with hygiene and cross infection - not my opinion, but that of a Doctor who watched one with me)can be sold in large quantities, and others can run expensive training days, and invite the succesful shooter to buy his carcass at double the commercial rate.

Forgive me if I pronounce heresy, but I have grave reservations.

MG-J

You've said it all! Very good summary I think.

For me DMQ level 2 was a vehicle which took me out of my own narrow practice allowed me to check and cross referance with a professional and then go back to my own narrow practice.

My assessor continues to be a mentor. The benefit I got from the process was solely down to him and not the process per se.

It is quite apparent that 'irregularities' occur. A recent article in Sporting Rifles (the on line thing) detailed how the candidate was dragged along and shown the deer to shoot. He couldn't see it so it had to be pointed out again!

As for pluck for game dealer it is an absolute nightmare for the on foot stalker. No more gralloch on site and into the sac with the doe and the sling for the fawns.

1894 (anything to do with the 6.5x55?)

As an extension to that, we ought to curse MAFF as the sponsors of our Game Meat Regs - which have ended up as rather gold plated. This I know because I ended up doing the coments on the original draft, and saw the names of the other commentators. all pheasant men, agents for estates and no stalkers at all.(Didn't include BDS - not that they would know a great deal about the commercial end) It was quite astonishing, and for that reason we ended up (or would have) with the Red Meat Regs, but with the word "venison" replacing, "beef". The ignorance was amazing.

But then so was the gold plating.

For instance the European regs simply say that a carcass for export must be inspected by a "vetinerarian, or suitably qualified assistant." I quote from the official translation. Bear in mind that to get agreement, the Brussels regs are written in a very general way - guidelines for the Countries to interpret as they wish. Bear in mind also that on the continent a vetinarian is a sort of vet nurse, NOT a surgeon.

Britains version, as finally wrote by MAFF at Tolworth, says that carcases have to be inspected by a Qualified Vetineray Surgeon, not employed by the exporting concern. Had they wished, they could have said that the suitably qualified inpector was a meat inspector, a holder of Level 2, FC Ranger, whatever. Still you can see that what was intended to be a fairly low level inspection has become a very expensive operation which really froze out the smaller exporter, concetrated the market in the hands of the few and depressed prices. Above all it is entirely a self inflicted wound.

Nexy, the regs say that a carcass shall be inspected with "such offal as is available". That was put in specificaly to allow carcases which had no offal to be available to go for export, and particularly to minimise the impact on the industry. Nicholas Soames, the then Minister, insisted on that wording. See where we have got to to now.

So when you are up north with most of a deer over your shoulder, breathe a word of thanks to our bureaucarats, who are responsible both for the extra physical stress, and the fact that you are being paid peanuts for your roe!

MG-J,
It gets worse!
The powers that be within the venison trade are now insisting on vetenary inspection with every carcass.
Bacterialogical swabbing was also trying to be introduced.
The big 3 have been in discussion with maff/defra to see if they can turn this into legislation.

This would eliminate the smaller venison dealers like ourselves who cannot afford to have an on site vet or the facilities for bacterialogical swabbing.
Its great to know your amongst friends in the venison trade!!!
With limited approved dealers you will get a better price for your venison, Honest!!

griff

Just chuck load of dilute hypochlorite over the whole thing. Leave for 10 mins, wash with fresh water. If its OK for dairy pipework, its OK for carcases. If you want them sterile, thats fine, so long as I don't have to taste it! Never goes mouldy though. So much for carcass handling.

To be serious, ever so slowly they are missing the point. The further they push this, and the way they are going, the only people who will be able to meet standards will be the FC with their �18 million subsidy for Wales alone, because only they can work uneconomically. Eventually their market will become confined to the FC and they will lose. People will either give up, or develop alternative markets.

Take ourselves. We produce about 500 +/- carcases a year, plus a few (50?) bought in. We are not buyers and sellers, but if someone brings a couple in, we'll take it. One is at the break point. Below that, its probably not worth breaking into carcases except at a very small level. Above that, you just sub the butchering out, and start selling.

I feel that the one thing the venison dealers have overlooked is the value of venison to the professional stalker, who supply the bulk of the UK market. I just hate the idea of even mentioning this, but the real truth is that the amateur could eat or deal with most of his venison. The professional could really afford to dig a hole and bury it. What are you looking at - 7% of turnover - it pays for the dieso thats all, by the time you have run the fridg etc. I take great pride in our floppies and getting them out looking good. However 3 good park trophies are worth more than the whole venison output for a year. Four would include getting the whole lot burned! This is true, not some fanciful dream.

Where I feel the likes of the BDS and BASC and the Deer Initiative fall down is in their lack of appreciation of the consequences for deer management. Once people find the thing is too awkward, people will stop doing it, and as the regs get tighter and tighter, and margins are eaten into, the net value of the product decreases. Just take a roebuck. You shoot one decent head - financially if not ethically you can throw the carcass. Fine, process those trophy carcases - the really aged high quality ones!Do you need to shoot roe does in Dorset to meet carrying capacity etc. Not in the slightest - you can carry a lot more than there are at present without even thinking about it. Sex ratio - theres nothing on dairy farmland to damage, and the farmers are, in the main unfussed about numbers, so long as they get their cheque. So the only purpose in maintaining an even sex ratio is to improve the way the bucks come to the call, which would not materially affect a relatively short phase in the stalking year.

So what they'll end up within the easy living south, is an army of muntjac, loads of roe, and the only people doing any serious shooting will be for roe bucks, and the rest will go hang. The ones who will hang first will be English Nature with their grants and trees, others with grants and trees, and the FC who will start to suffer from natural import.

It is happening now to a degree. I was asked to take on the hind cull of sika on one Estate. They had 100 to take out (70 realistically). The syndicate wanted all the stags. Apparently I could keep the venison. So they kept their hinds too!So they started to put feelers out for amateurs to do the job-and there are some very talented ones, but the time they could dedicate to such a cull, made the thing unrealistic. (At least someone was doing the sums!) In the lowlands, on average it takes a day to shoot a deer. Of course you have good days when you get lots, but you have bad ones when you see/select nothing. Who but the insane is going to work for a �40 carcase, less vehicle costs and other overheads? So, you HAVE to have the clients, and once you have the clients, the venison becomes irrelevant.

Again, that may seem to be heresy, but its just the way the numbers stack. Pride makes me look after bodies, but in terms of hassle, their value is very marginal. Genuinely I would hate to see it go that way - it goes against everything I feel is right, but figures have to match up if you make your living at it.

I hate even seeing a park cull turned into 1 1/2 tons of mince, but thats the best way of dealing with it. No fridg to run, no distance pulling trailers etc. Just straight down the road, matey hacks it off the bone in chunks, no deductions, the whole lot goes into the grinder, no one bar the stalker gives a damn how well its shot, and its sold in bulk before you are home. And the big 3 who used to get it, don't even get a sniff.

Do either they, or we the stalkers, want it to go that way?

MG-J, Merryck per chance?

Yes it is the DOB of 6.5x55.

For the amateur the carcass value makes a BIG difference. It is what allows him/her to defray the costs of the sport. There are still places where you can get arable roe stalking for half value of carcasses culled. Take it from me unless you put the cash in an account, year end from 3,000 acres is painful to find for the farmer, even if you shot them all with Ballistic Tips !

[ 01-16-2003, 15:15: Message edited by: 1894 ]

Yes it is. And I'm glad to half welcome you to the 6.5 club. Drop the BTs and it would be an open arms job.

In that case I paint rather a gloomy picture, since most roe goes for export. If you remember we were, not so long ago, up at �1.82 per pound. Since then, the Continental price has been OK, and the fallback in roe price to about �1 per lb (�2.20 per kg) has been credited to the strength of the pound. Which is only partly true. A good deal of it has been to the additional expense of processing/inspecting. So its hitting already.

I don't think this is a healthy state of afairs for the good amateur. He needs his venison to defray costs, and rents are rising. They are rising because farmers need the money. They are rising because professionals like me can afford to pay the ante, because they know that in the end, they can afford to pay the money and still, on roe, make a sensible return.

Its not good for the deer either actually, because already one is seeing people pushing the margins on the older bucks in order to cover rents. Its easier to go out and shoot more thatn to go and get more land= stock. In other words, if you want to manage your age structure properly to produce that SURPLUS of older bucks to take as trophies (the long term view), already on the bigger estates, the value of the rents is making that more difficult to achieve. People are beginning to rely on natural import, which is OK (well not really),until some punter takes up on your boundary. Then you don't get the import on which the value of the stalking has been predicated.

My answer with roe is to keep well away from the bigger estates. Whatever, one has to do something to keep the population intact. What does the amateur do? He can shot more does to cover, if he's not so rich as to be able to afford the place outright, but then he's also comitted to attacking the bucks, usually starting with the younger ones, to hold sex ratios at parity. Then of course, if it gets shot as a yearling, it'll never make a biggun. I continue to work on achieving that miracle, but ain't found a way yet.

Sadly, I do not think that the rise in popularity of stalking, nor this increased regulation is doing our deer much good, however much it may be good for business in the short term.

UMMM - don't agree.

Lets consider managing for damage control with roe first.

Next lets define a trophy. In management terms its not necessarily a medal or near medal buck. Though we might use the term trophy as shorthand, what we should be talking about are mature bucks of a quality which is good for their age AND FOR THE AREA.

The area bit is important, because if you don't have soil and weather right, the big buck (in absolute) terms is going to be a rarity. You get up north, where the deer are having to burn a lot of energy just to function, and top end bucks will not be easily arrived at. Get onto southern chalk downland, where the soil is copper deficient, and you are going to find big heads are difficult to come by. Get into areas which are relatively high in sulphur, and you are up against it. All of that is quite independent of cover and weather. So its a good buck for the area that we are after, whether he is 250g and really not very exciting, or 450g plus, and thumping through the silver medals as a four year old.

Now lets look at the damage control aspect, and there are two considerations.

The first is just sheer volume of mouths - shoot does. The second is fraying on young trees, and as we all know, larger (older)bucks fray less. So if one is doing the damge control thing, what you need is a few allies in the form of a network of big old boys(trophies) who are keeping all the youngsters under control, ejecting the surplus etc. So, with respect, if you are managing for damge control, you do want these trophy bucks about - they are your friends and pure gold.

The value is in part in how many you can carry, without provoking a turf war which, in damage control terms, is a disaster. Also it lies in the overall quality (absolute), where a lot of the cull bucks are over the 300g mark, and are therefore very saleable in their own right.

Now, if you are a foul commercial stalker such as myself, I want loads of these old fellows (don't I wish), but again, you also have to be thinking about next year, and the year after. So the imperative for me is to cull my mature bucks very lightly to maintain an age structure. In principle therefore both of us should be doing the same thing. Sex ratios and numbers for damage or response of the bucks to the call, and a very careful balancing of the age structure. The reasons may be slightly different, but the process is identical - which I why I didn't even bother to respond to that article in Deer magazine, because it just indicated a cosmic ignorance of the stalking world, either amateur or professional.

Anyway, I hope that, in the case of the territorial deer, I have made a cogent case for correct management - whether the reasons that drive you are base professional greed, or high minded amateurism, damage control or trophy production, or just because you like your your deer.

Fallow are different because they are not territorial, and the damage a mature buck can do is very significant. Here I disagree with JA, because I don't think that she has thought this one through.

The real problem with fallow is that we do not have a quality in the wild, to produce any more than average heads. We had a patch up in Ipswich where not a SINGLE mature buck was shot in the 6 years we had the place, and you still didn't have anything worth really talking about. (Not quite true, because I did bang off a couple without plamations but nothing "decent" was EVER shot) It was quite big enough to contain most of the deer most of the time. The simple fact is that the CIC scales are based on the big Hungarians, Swedes and Holsteiners, and we just don't have that line. (In the same way as they don't have our roe).

So when we are on damage control (and with fallow it is almost always damage driven), my strategy is conserve one or two good mature bucks - making darned sure that there are not enough of these big powerful brutes to do too much damage - and shoot every female and younger buck I can. Get the numbers down get the age structure down, and keep younger less strong bucks.

The thing about holding ones stalking is IMHO about explaining relative values to the landowner. Explain exactly what ones strategy is with the deer, and the reasons. Then whisper the dirty word "Grants" in his ear. Followed by obscenitise like "replanting costs" "interest payments" "own expense" "lost opportunity costs". Richard S would be a master at this. (I presume Deerdogs is him). Basically the sums do not add up, and if people go in and offer fantastic sums for ground, the only way they will recover it is by shooting out those mature bucks, with the consequent mayhem amongst their trees. The only way you can make stalking work, as a landowner of a medium sized Estate is to be certain that the deer are managed properly and in accordance with ones priorities, and to pick up a rent along the way that allows that. There is no such thing as a free lunch, and if the deer are not managed correctly, whether by a professional or amateur, any apparent gain in increased rent is wiped out very quickly.

Talk money - you know it makes sense.

A sika Estate, of about 2500 acres. The rent was about �2500, and it went to a syndicate of business men who were only interested in the stags, and got the keeper to shoot the odd hind in his spare time. A forester came along, and said they had to go or grants would be at risk. The boys doubled the rent and they stayed for a further 2 years. The forester geared up again, so they doubled the rent again, and the Estate grabbed the cash. Well the foresters came again, at inspection time, and the long and the short of it was that the total rent for the entire period has been wiped out. The estate is now out of pocket and still has a deer problem.

I hope that, having provoked some weeping and wailing about venison prices, that has made you smile. Money, as they say, isn't everything.