Dear, oh deer...
The editor’s attempt to get his deer-stalking qualification wasn’t all plain sailing
If you run your life on the basis that you should try and learn something new every day – as I was instructed to do from an early age – then the British Association of Shooting and Conservation’s entry-level deer qualification may be just the ticket for you. I learned enough new things in three days to last me the rest of the year, giving me months to bask in glorious ignorance.
Some of the things I learned were mildly disturbing. How old must someone be before they are allowed to use an estate rifle, for instance? The answer is 17, which I guarantee will come as a shock to many stalkers around the country. At what age are you legally able to lend your rifle to your son or daughter if you are accompanying them and the stalk is on land you own? Again the answer is 17. For anyone to be able to stalk before that age, they need to be aged 14 or above and not only have their own firearms certificate, but have the rifle they use registered on it.
A quick straw poll of stalkers I know produced precisely none who knew the law on this front. Each one I spoke to has broken the law on this, as have I. Ignorance may be bliss, but sadly it’s no defence when it comes to the law, and especially when guns are involved. But remedying my own knowledge deficit was by no means the only reason for undertaking BASC’s Deer Stalking Certificate 1 (DSC1).
I have to say that I signed up for the course with mixed feelings. Part of me knew that as I usually stalk at least once a year, I really ought to be au fait with all the ever-expanding reams of regulations and best practise. But three days of intensive tuition appealed about as much as root canal treatment. And deep down – well, just below the surface – was the very real fear, what happens if I, ahem, fail?
Two factors persuaded me to change my mind. The first was the imposing figure of Donald Muir, the training guru at BASC’s Scottish office in Trochry, near Dunkeld. Picking his brains as I do from time to time, The Don made the point that as editor of Scotland’s leading country magazine, I ought to show the way.
The DSC1, he said, may be rigorous but it was brought in partly in an effort to head-off the sort of one-size-fits-all legislation that would drastically reduce access to stalking for all but the hard-core and the landed. Apparently, not only do I have a duty to be seen to be well-informed, I also have a duty to bolster the cause of rigorous self-regulation. The possibility the DSC1 may soon be a prerequisite for owning a firearms licence (more than 70% of those who stalk deer unaccompanied in Scotland have already passed DSC1) also helped tip the balance.
The final factor was an increasingly tweedie friend who manages a chunk of beautiful land in Highland Perthshire and not only wanted to increase his knowledge base but also thought it would be a helpful backstop to have the ability to sell venison to a dealer (which is arguably the most clear-cut benefit of gaining the DSC1 qualification). This former urban smoothie friend – he prefers to remain anonymous, so let’s just call him Will – uses a contract stalker to fulfil the deer culling quota on the land he manages, but the poor stalker was recently in a bad car crash (thankfully, he survived) and Will realised that had it happened at a less opportune time of year, he’d have been stuffed.
Having taken the plunge at the behest of the dastardly duo, I was horrified when an A4 folder weighing almost as much as a breeze block and with as many pages as War & Peace thumped onto my desk one morning. This was homework. A quick perusal confirmed that the only thing that exceeds my confidence in my own abilities is my ignorance. At this point, I did what I usually do to tricky problems and put the folder in a dark drawer where it stayed until DSC-day.
D-Day dawns
This came around all too quickly. Before I knew it, Will and I were sitting in a classroom in Trochry, the befuddled pair of us soaking up industrial quantities of information on the six different types of UK deer – red, sika, fallow, roe, muntjac and Chinese water deer. If that was much as expected, our 10 fellow inmates came as something of a mild surprise. Instead of rampant tweediness and plummy voices, this was a commendably mixed bag, ranging from a young stalker from Uist and a retiree whose forestry project was being ravaged by deer, to a couple of former soldiers, someone moving from the city to Harris, and a Borders lawyer whose two-acre garden was crawling with roe deer that would look better in his Aga. The star turn was a larger-than-life Canadian hedge fund manager from London who was a vegetarian, and a target-shooter, and who was there because he was only willing to eat meat he had killed himself. The lessons were not overly difficult, but the sheer weight of knowledge to be absorbed was daunting. Doe identification was peculiarly tricky because the photos made all the deer look the same size. On a couple of occasions I felt a flicker of guilt at the caustic bollockings I recently dispensed to my daydreaming youngest son for his inability to concentrate in class. By the end of day two, I was feeling rather sorry for myself and was convinced I have chronic ADHD.
Day three contained a succession of moments of truth. The exam started with Q&A sections that included topics such as hygiene, the law, ballistics and deer ecology. Then came an unexpectedly tricky slideshow in which we had to identify 16 out of 20 deer mugshots – completely spooked and occasionally baffled, I ended with 22 answers to 20 questions and realised with a sense of dread that the failure I’d feared was surely at hand. Will couldn’t have looked sicker had he been a parrot suffering from seasickness.
And that was before the actual shooting test, an examination of accuracy that has terrified even the toughest Highland stalkers (and which many have apparently failed, to their eternal shame). We had to put three consecutive shots into a four-inch target from 100 metres while in a lying position; then two into a deer target from 100 metres, again, while lying; two shots at 70m while sitting or kneeling; and finally two into a target from 40 metres while standing. Will was right to worry as we’d practised the night before and it hadn’t been promising: the words ‘barn’ and ‘door’ were used liberally, as were lots of words that couldn’t possibly be reprinted here. If we failed to pass this section of the test, we would surely spend days standing in the corner wearing a dunce’s hat.
In the event, we both aced the safety section (in which you have to get every question right) and the much-feared target shooting. I was, said my youngest son with a smirk, a complete Deadeye Dick. They say the nicest things, kids.
The suspense was not over, not by a long chalk. Although Donald and his fellow instructors, Kenny and Colin, were allowed to give us an indication of whether we’d passed, it was not definitive. My verdict of ‘borderline’ in several areas, except for the shooting, didn’t bode well, and Will’s list of failings was remarkably comprehensive. Except it wasn’t, and the only section he has to retake is the deer identification. I, on the other hand – like the majority of the course – passed and have my DSC1 certificate proudly displayed on my wall. And, who knows, once the experience has worn off, like a mother forgetting the horrors of childbirth, I may even get around to doing DSC2.
‘ Will couldn’t have looked sicker had he been a parrot suffering from seasickness’