I've been thinking of broadening my sporing horizons as a way of breaking the post game season blues. I've done four of the UK deer species (roe, fallow, muntjac, chinese) to a good representitive trophy, but i was thinking that it may be nice to do the others.

Now i know i am obviously missing a red and a sika, and aim to do that this year, but what else in this country is there?

Friends had done goats and pere david and i would welcome any suggestions of stalkers for these

Boar

Regards

Mark

SWS,

A big old stinky Billy goat !!!

And some might say the Black Panther....
(which I read is actually a Menil Leapord???)

Rgds,

There are also 3 species of wild sheep on Islay

Southern Hebridean

Northern Hebridean

Feral Black face

Are there feral goats,in the motherland??

many thanks for the hints so far!

I have spoken to someone about the goats, but would rather book on a recommendation, so if anyone has any body that they have used please pass on the info.

JOn2 the sheep sound rather interesting, have you done those? If so who do you use, and was the experience worthwhile?

Many thnaks

SWS

SWS

The wild sheep on Islay are in my opinion more challenging than say for example a Roe deer hunt.

I have taken 2 Southern Hebrideans and one Feral Black face.

Islay also has Rock Goats, Makhor Goats, Roe and Red. The Red Stags are pure blood line Cervus Elephus Scoticus and have never been interfered with. We have a 3 year waiting list for Red Stags but if you are interested in a sheep hunt PM me and i will provide you with more details.

John,

Are those sheep anyway related to soay (sp?) sheep, which i believe are also found wild/feal in that part of the world???

Do you have any pictures??

Regards,

Pete

Hi Pete

I am not sure about being related to Soay sheep but i do know that Queens University Belfast has been doing a study on them for several years now and still are to understand why they have never hybridised.

To answer your question about pictures i was going to post some but found that i am unable to do so via Fotango. I have some in my album and on Fotango but it seems you cannot email the picture as a jpeg.

The S. Hebs are black fleece with black horns and black face - basically all black.

The N. Hebs are all white (as above)

The Feral Black Face are as per N. Hebs but with an all black face.

Jon,

If you PM me the links to the site, I'd be happy to play about and see if i can get them to post...If i can save them to my PC i'll drop them onto another hosting site and it should work that way??

Regards,

Pete

Hi Pete,

Jon's away all week stalking but I could forward copies of the photos to you from Fotango if you think that would work. Let me know.

Regards,

Tim,

As long as Jon won't mind, send over what ever you can and I'll see what i can do...

Regards,

Pete

Good morning Pete. You should have a load of photos by now to play around with.

Good luck.

Having Google image searched the sheep, they look rather interesting particularly the four horned ones!

I could'nt get all the pictures to load properly, but managed the ones below...












When Jon gets back I'm hoping he'll fill out the back ground to the photo's and I can edit things so these will then appear in one of his posts..

Well the sheep are looking promising for this year or the next, depending on a couple of prior work and clay shooting commitments, but who can recommend someone for a boar?

Thanks for all the tips and pointers so far, and i hope to be able to work something out with jon2

Sheep?! I am struggling with the idea of stalking those white woolly critters in the bottom two pics.

I have sheep at home and they are less intelligent than my chickens!

I'd like to hear more about the challenges offered by a feral sheep hunt. Seriously.

I think you can compare the two to wild and domestic turkeys. That is to say there is no comparison!

What's the mutton like on them?

Dr Duc's analogy is a good one.

To the average Brit the concept of sheep being challenging is completely alien. To anyone who has hunted wild sheep it is not and they appreciate the challenge of getting one of these animals on the ground.

I have only eaten the back straps of the sheep and they tasted almost identical to venison. I presume because they eat a similar diet.

Jon 2

quote:

To the average Brit the concept of sheep being challenging is completely alien.

...wow, I'll say ...only UK sheep shooting I've ever taken part in was in Sennybridge and the ammo was free

...despite that I must admit that this has piqued my interest...do I detect from your posts that you're a Sporting Agent? ..Although I have to admit that putting 'stalking' in the same sentence as 'sheep' does feel a little odd (!) what are the ballpark costs for feral sheep stalking?