Setting sights on solving horns of a dilemma

Dependent upon how old you are, the mention of deer may bring about happy memories of watching Walt Disney’s Bambi at the cinema. It is this image that has given the animal a good press for years.

But behind the romantic celluloid perception of a cute beast lurks an animal that is fast becoming a nuisance to the countryside. The problem is that there are now far too many deer roaming around, destroying plant life, trees, vegetation and farmers’ crops.

This week scientists have called for a 50 per cent cull of the UK deer population, which they believe presently runs to around 1.5 million. Because deer are wild animals no-one quite knows just how many there are at one time, but academics believe there are now more deer in the UK than at any time in the past 1,000 years.

Whilst what sounds like a massive cull is bound to get animal rights activists up in arms, particularly as most culling is performed by stalkers killing as a leisure activity, it is also not being welcomed by those rural communities who have built a tourist trade on the back of paid-for deer shoots.

John Robson runs Deer Management and Stalking in Driffield. When he left school he joined Sledmere Estate as assistant gamekeeper. Having worked on other farms, and for agricultural contractors since that time, as well as starting his own company specialising in the management of the deer population, he is in a prime position to comment on the situation in Yorkshire.

“There is no doubt in my mind that the deer population is growing. Since I started on deer management in 1985 I would estimate the number of deer in the county has increased fourfold. Our increase in numbers is nothing in comparison to some of the counties further south such as Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. Those counties are stuffed with deer.

“Our deer in Yorkshire are predominantly roe deer. If you go up into Scotland where it’s more like Monarch of the Glen territory it is red deer; and in East Anglia it is muntjac deer.

“What people don’t realise is the damage they cause. They nibble and graze and what they do has a wholesale effect on the whole rural habitat for plants, flowers, trees, birds and insects. They particularly like to eat delicate wildflowers and they kill off native plants and the wildlife that live off them such as moths, butterflies and rare bird species.

“They also wreak widespread and severe crop damage. They are not vermin, although there some who class them as such, and that’s because of what they do. It is said that a small deer is the equivalent of one sheep and a big deer equals either two or three sheep. Imagine if 15-20 sheep got into your field of wheat or barley, the outcome is much worse when deer get there and because they are wild that’s what can happen more often if you don’t look at managing them.

“I get farmers contacting me all the time telling me they have a problem with deer, and often as not it surprises them just how many deer they have on their land once I start with a head count. The problem is that they think they are seeing the same deer each time and that often turns out not to be the case. Typically a family stays together so you have a buck and a doe, plus two young ones. You might think you are seeing the same family each time but in reality it turns out to be far more. So when a farmer tells me he may have up to four-to-seven then it doesn’t surprise me when we find about 17-20.”

John is at the forefront of what is a burgeoning industry and pastime in the country. Deer stalking is the fastest growing of all the shooting discipline sports. Part of that is down to the numbers that need to be shot, but that’s not why many are taking up the hobby even though they are assisting in the overall management.

“There is a need for many more but we are always careful about who comes into the sport. Obviously you have to have the right people because a big gun, a rifle, can fire up to a distance of four miles and the killing needs to be conducted effectively and efficiently. The police are always quite keen on keeping an eye on who has a firearm like this.”

In the UK wild deer are owned by no-one. Landowners and those with stalking rights can authorise shooting on their land and the carcasses become the landowner’s or the shoot’s possession. These generally go into the food chain as venison. Wild venison is a very low-fat, free-range meat.

The rapid growth in the UK herd, which has led to the call for a cull of 750,000 this year, is down to a number of factors including increased woodland cover, milder winters and because, other than stalkers, they have no natural predator.

Several deer farms, where the deer are kept solely for venison rather than being allowed to run wild, are operational in Yorkshire.

There has also been a growth in the number of urban-based wild deer in recent decades. The roe and muntjac are territorial species that are attracted by the green open spaces of parkland and nearby woodland. The general public enjoys seeing wild deer in city and town parkland.

John Robson believes that the current explosion of deer in Yorkshire and throughout the UK, whether in the countryside or urban areas, brings about another problem.

“When poachers realise there are a number of deer in a specific area they don’t abide by any rules. All they are looking to do is make a killing no matter what it takes, they drive roughshod across fields and take what they can get. That’s not the kind of culling that is needed.”

LIFE ON THE HOOF: DEER FACTS

They breed once a year, usually in May, and generally tend to have twins.

There are six species that exist in the wild in the UK: red and roe deer are the two native species; fallow deer are now long-established; sika, muntjac and Chinese water deer were introduced in the past 150 years.

Road traffic accidents brought about by a sudden appearance of a deer are on the increase, recent figures show.

An estimated 350,000 deer are culled in the UK each year presently.