Charles Smith-Jones
The British Deer Society (BDS)
Founded in 1963, the BDS aims to ensure a healthy population of wild deer in balance with the environment. To this end, it provides training, education, research and advice, including the standard Deer Stalking Certification, and information on how and where to see deer. bds.org.uk
“The law has very specific open and close seasons for shooting deer. Females are protected when they’re just about to give birth or they’ve got dependent young, and are controlled generally during the winter. The male deer shooting season tends to revolve around when they’ve got antlers, because they drop them in the spring and regrow them before the rut. And in times past, when they set the seasons, they looked at male deer as creatures of the chase and trophies.
“An extension to the season is being discussed at the moment in Scotland, to reduce numbers, because there is no doubt that in some places deer are doing unacceptable levels of damage. There’s a big push to rewilding in a lot of places and you can’t get new trees coming through if the deer are eating all the saplings the moment they break through the soil.
“Our concern is to make sure deer are protected at the times of year when they need protection. The British
Deer Society was founded in the 1960s as a direct result of a desire to see deer treated better than they were.
The people who formed the BDS campaigned for what eventually became the Deer Act, which set out shooting seasons and said that you’ve got to use the right sort of rifle, ammunition and other equipment. Prior to that, all kinds of terrible things were done to deer and the law didn’t protect them. This is why we promote deer management training – we want it to be done as efficiently and humanely as possible.
“Of course, if you’re shooting a beautiful animal like a deer, we don’t want to see it wasted. We want to see the venison getting into the human food chain. So it’s got to be treated and killed efficiently because the more outright an animal is killed, the better quality the meat will be because there are no stress hormones flooding the system. Venison is probably the healthiest red meat you can eat. It’s very lean, it’s low in all the bad fats and high in vitamins. It’s also incredibly ethical, as far as I’m concerned, because a wild deer has lived an entirely wild life.
“The red deer sexes live apart for most of the year, only coming together for the rut around October. It’s stunning to watch and very exciting, but rutting deer need to be given plenty of space. There have been problems, particularly down in the south of England, in the New Forest, for instance. With the great resurgence of interest in the countryside, more people are going out to watch deer rutting, and sadly they are accidentally disrupting the rut and breaking it up.”