The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

Probably good eating.....and a nice change from venison.

Pete

Tel you what, I'll shoot it and you can drag it.

OK....but you can cook it....

Pete

On this subject, there was a piece this morning on "Farming Today" about a Scottish gov initiative, "Community Stalking", whereby locals would be offered training to enable them get a licence and permission to stalk deer in certain areas.
Sounds to me like a very good idea, unusual for a government initiative. A surfeit of deer is obviously a big problem in the highlands, one which evidently isn't being addressed by wealthy blokes in 4x4's....
And anything that gets more people eating the stuff can't be all bad, it's delicious...(we had a couple of slow-cooked New Forest shanks yesterday.)

Pete

The problem is that the estates refuse to spend money on managing their asset.

Locals who want to shoot deer in the Highlands do so regardless of the false need for "training" or licenses. Ok I perhaps see that if you are putting it into the commercial food chain then some level of processing awareness could be of benefit. The problem is that training nowadays serves only the purpose of avoiding liability rather than imparting meaningful knowledge, skills and effectively checking that learning has actually taken place.

If you seriously want to tackle the issue of red deer over population then it should be made a statutory duty on land owners to mange their land, fauna and flora in a sustainable way.

Regarding the deer that means sustained management on culling over a period of 5-10 years, not start stop, headline grabbing "initiatives" that will fail as much as the last "idea". Coupled with the still ever increasing red deer numbers.

The European bison is not native to Britain, but its close relative the globally extinct forest bison Bison schoetensacki was here, at least during the Pleistocene. The surviving European bison is a suitable surrogate for this extinct species.

Direct quote from Google.