Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Danish principles to manage royal stags
Berleburg is to red deer management what Mouton Rothschild is to wine and cast antlers are highly prized, discovers Thomas Nissen
For most Danes, Berleburg is best known for its link to the Danish royal family, which was forged when the sister of Denmark’s Queen Margrethe, Princess Benedikte, wed Germany’s Prince Richard of Sayn-wittgensteinberleburg in 1968. However, for hunters interested in deer shooting and game management, the estate is recognised for its highly selective stag hunts that adhere to strict tried-andtested management principles.
Ole Rasmussen, a former game management student at Berleburg, is equally choosy about the guests he invites to take game there. The estate’s staff guide all the hunts.
As a child, Ole went on holiday to Germany every year. When he was six years old, he went past Berleburg but he didn’t know then what an influence it would have on his life. After leaving school in 1995, Ole began training as a gamekeeper and stalker. In 2000, he had a free year to seek a work challenge of his choice.
He knew that he wanted to spend the year abroad, but he didn’t want to work in England, Scotland or South Africa, which seemed to be what most Danes in his situation were doing. Instead, he decided to see if he could work at Berleburg.
He knew it would be difficult, but as his uncle worked for the Danish royal family — a position he held for 42 years — Ole had a unique opportunity to get in touch with Prince Richard. After a conversation with the prince, Ole was employed in Berleburg’s hunting service for most of the year.
When the course finished, Ole got a job in Denmark, where he continued working in deer management, but he maintained his connections with the German royals. A few years later, Ole asked if he could bring two Danes to the estate to shoot red deer. Prince Richard and his son, Prince Gustav, happily agreed. They also told Ole that he could organise two hunts there every year in the future.
From 2016, Ole started to arrange guided hunting expeditions for Berleburg’s red stags and mouflon sheep in earnest. From the start, he has always accompanied his carefully selected hunters during the trip, entertaining and steering them while also assisting the estate’s head gamekeeper, Patrick Rath.
Slow rut
Unfortunately that year September and October had been hot and the rut hasn’t really started when I arrive in December. But if you don’t try, you can’t possibly succeed,
so along with Mark, the hunter
I was accompanying, we set off. The estate comprises 13,000 hectares. Though the headkeeper has overall responsibility for the grounds, he has assistants and foresters to help monitor different areas. They in turn are assisted by gamekeeping and forestry students.
The woodlands where this evening’s hunt will take place is under the watchful eye of forester Andreas Becker. He knows of two stags that meet the estate’s shooting criteria
— a 16-year-old and an injured stag of around 11 years. Usually, the estate only authorises the culling of stags aged more than 12, but exceptions are made when one appears to be wounded.
Anyone who wants to stalk red stags at Berleburg must abide by the estate’s traditions and be respectful to both the game and its approach to hunting. At Berleburg, you do not dictate how many stags will be shot or insist on a gold-medal beast — you take the right stag at the right age. There should be no debate if the stalker asks the guest to shoot — the designated stag must be taken.
The hunt primarily takes place from high seats overlooking
clearings and fields in the forest where the deer come to feed.
An hour before sunset, one of Berleburg’s rarer white hinds emerges from the woods, followed by a typical rusty-red calf. A small number of Berleburg’s red deer are white or grey. They are descended from a white female introduced to the estate from the royal deer park north of Copenhagen. At the time of writing, the grounds have a population of about 70 white specimens, but older white stags are not available to be shot every year.
White hinds can easily produce red calves, just as red females give birth to white or grey calves. It all depends on the animals’ genetics.
A few minutes after the hind and calf wander out of the forest’s cover, a stag follows. It is the injured 11-yearold and Andreas quickly confirms the hunter can take the animal.
For a long time, the stag is hidden by tree trunks and small bushes, but when it finally stops in the open after a brief, unsuccessful pursuit of the hind, Mark takes it in the shoulder and the stag falls. The female and her calf seem unaware of what has happened. It’s a few moments before they return to the forest, leaving the dead stag in their wake.
Honour
When a stag is taken in Berleburg, it is honoured according to German hunting tradition. A twig is placed in the animal’s mouth, on its shoulder and in the hunter’s hat. Later, as part of the ancient ritual, the deer is laid on a bed of oak leaves in the castle park, and horns are blown. In a practice
that is unique to Berleburg, the stag is also flanked by the antlers it has cast over the years.
It has been a long tradition at Berleburg to collect the antlers cast by adult males. The practice enables the gamekeepers to mark the progress of each stag’s rack and, more importantly, determine the animal’s age. They do not collect antlers from spikers, as these cannot be distinguished from each other, but once they have two or more tines, they have characteristics that make it possible to recognise each animal and catalogue them year after year.
Berleburg’s headkeeper identifies a stag’s cast antlers by the burr’s rosette, which is as individual as a fingerprint. He also compares the shape of the antlers’ points from year to year, though this isn’t always straightforward as the second point can disappear for some years before reappearing later.
Cast antlers are often used commercially to make furniture, ornaments, buttons and so on, which gives them an economic value. When a visiting hunter takes a red stag at Berleburg, he has the opportunity to buy the animal’s cast antlers at the day’s going rate. Often the estate’s employees can deliver a complete set, but that’s not always the case.
Sometimes, if there were years when the cast antlers were never found, a hunter must put up with missing racks. The situation is worse if the stag only entered the estate in the same year it was shot. In that case, there are no antlers at all.
Cast antlers
One of the keepers’ tactics to collect the discarded prongs involves adding a wooden overlay over the hay feeder, which knocks off the antlers when the stags lower their heads to eat the hay. Stags also cast their racks when they get up after sitting for a while.
A handful of casual workers comb the woods to find any cast antlers that have been lost in the thickets away from the feeders. In Germany, specially trained dogs can do the job, but Berleburg relies on humans. Now and then, the hunt for a discarded rack proves to be particularly memorable for the one who finds it. In this case, the estate sometimes gives them the antler as a souvenir, but usually this is only if a hunter doesn’t purchase the collection or the stag is never shot.
These workers also get the pleasure of wandering the grounds of a finely managed estate where the staff’s expertise in red deer management, along with a well-judged, restrictive shooting policy, ensures that the animals thrive largely based on natural selection. These practices, which have been carried out for centuries, also guarantee that the name Berleburg will continue to be synonymous with excellence for generations to come.
Contact information: Ole Rasmussen arranged this trip. Website: jagtognaturpleje.dk Telephone: +45 22 99 18 18