[Closed] Trophy hunters... (red stag content)

As a confirmed meat eater and sometime deer stalker even I think this is lame:
1) You should only kill for meat, a big red like that is old and would be very tough.
2) Mid rut, as they are now, its body is coursing with hormones which make the meat taste like dog doo doo.
3) Sometimes you see an animal that and just walk away, not only for the reasons above but because it's too amazing to shoot. I reckon the fact that he survived this long is that most stalkers think like me.

what toys said.

+ IMO stalking is a neccesssary function maintain the size, health and quality of the herd. Cullers do so for the benefit of everyone. Trophy hunters are utterly selfish.

IMO only local gamekeepers and vet affiliates should be licenced to cull and they can supervise paying guests subject to rules of herd husbandry..

PS - and whichever twet thought it would be a smart idea to nail such a high profile stag only days after it's photograph had been published in all the papers should be tarred and feathered.

Very sad.

Having been close to the Reds of the Quantocks for years and watched them through the seasons i'm deeply upset reading that, last year two large reds were killed in the exmoor area, out of the rutting season though, nothing was taken from the kill, so just for the thrill of the kill.

Much the same in this case it would seem, i used to shoot deer, rabbit, hare as well as birds, in fact anything wild and can understand the thrill it gives to hunt and to gather meat..

The fact it was done during the rutt..well that's just a poor form.

Bad show. There's necessary culling (there's a couple of herds of deer in the Chilterns that could do with thinning out) and there's needless slaughter...

Well exactly.

There seems to be a definite increase in the number of 'ego bangers'.

Paying guns in helicopters with Somerset as a free-fire zone... it's the future!

Whenever I slaughter deer, I do it with a sword and I do it properly. IMO, if you hide behind the barrel of a gun then your a coward.

davidtaylforth - Member

Whenever I slaughter deer, I do it with a sword and I do it properly. IMO, if you hide behind the barrel of a gun then your a coward.

Tried that, I'm too short so even with a sword they get me with their antlers first. I have managed to nut one in the nuts before, didn't kill him but he was stunned long enough for me to rip his heart out with my teeth.

absolutley - if you want to take an animals life you should be prepared to fight for it and do it with your bare hands. gggrraaaarrrrrr!!!

What amazed me more than anything else was how cheap it was! Only £1k! Tragic that something so majestic has so little value to some..

i quite like the idea of hunters having to wrestle a stag with bare hands

They dont call me Stoner "the rabbit wrestler" for nought you know. I take on all comers.

B***Stard!

Toys (and Stoner's first post) have it spot on. Poor form.

I once bit a dormouse to death.

steady on Surfer. Im only joking. I shoot rabbits.

I believe in teamwork.

Behind that cute, cuddly and utterly loveable exterior, is a ruthless, vicious single-minded destructive force...

...the ferret's got a bit of a nip on it, as well.

[img] http://images.fotopic.net/?iid=1fs0xm&outx=800&quality=70 [/img]

No don't start about the pic being all on the piss; it's WCA, innit? Can't even sort a flippin' pic out propply ffs. 🙄

Someone paid money to kill something for fun/bragging rites.
F*** sadistic c. Karma will claim him some day.

As a qualified and experienced stalker....

I really couldn't comment without seeing the animal up close, and to be honest I have not spent enough time around reds to say with certainty what condition this animal was actually in - I think i'd be tempted to defer to the man on the ground who knew the herd.

What's clear is that he was a big old bastard, and that alone is enough to make me wonder whether he was going back (past his prime)

Its also not necessarily as simple as "big strong deer equals good" as it may be the case that he had been dominant for a few years, and taking him out would make space for one of the younger stags to come forward and fill his boots, put a bit of genetic variation in the herd and do everyone a world of good.

There are also a myriad of other reasons why he might have 'made himself a target', whether it was his selection of rutting ground (istr reading that he was close to a main road, which could have been a significant safety problem) or a particular crop was getting trashed - without local knowledge its difficult to tell, and what we have not heard is the actual reasoning behind the decision to cull, only the supposition of one or two vocal spokespeople.

The whole 'trophy hunter' discussion is irrelevant to this, as if the decision to take him out of the herd was based upon good reasons and made in advance, I don't think [b]who[/b] took the shot really makes any difference, and if they are willing to pay good money to have done so, which means the farmer gets some money and as such is willing to tolerate crop damage by the deer all year round rather than seeing them as a pest to be shot on sight (and there are fair number of farmers who think that) then its good for the deer, they become a valued resource which you can take a sustainable crop off, just like anything else you grow on a farm, everyone, including the deer, becomes a winner.

[url= http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/8087001/Exmoor-Emperor-killed-anger-at-shooting-of-prized-stag.html ]Torygraph[/url]
Even the Telegraph is incensed - maybe because it was a Johnny Foreigner that did it - but there's plenty of good reasoning in the piece.
Personally, I'd take photo's for trophies, and kill for the meat. I doubt I could pull the trigger on any animal though (unless I was really hungry).

Fair enough, Z-11. But I struggle to imagine why a [i]planned[/i] cull of an individual stag would take place during the rut.

Paying good money to shoot selected animals - no problem. Everyone (herd, stalker, gun, landowner) a winner.

Shot for bragging rights - load of sh1Te, imo.

As you say, it's hard to call without local info. But I've got a fair amount of family in that area - and there's definite exasperation regarding a minority of trophy gunners.

Fair enough, Z-11. But I struggle to imagine why a planned cull of an individual stag would take place during the rut

My guess, and its only a guess, would be that the landowner where the stag had set up his rut and was holding his hinds was trashing his crops, and that the landowner made the decision based on crop damage.

I'm a bit of a fan of landowners getting together to form a deer management group, particularly for herding species that can cover several farms, so one bloke who knows the herd sorts out the cull plan and it becomes a shared resource - however this isn't the way that UK game and property laws are written.

I also cannot ignore the comment in the news that he appears to have set up his rut close to a main road - and this may well have been a relevant factor, had we had someone killed hitting this lump at speed, then I'd be willing to wager the cry would be what was something not done to prevent it...

Paying good money to shoot selected animals - no problem. Everyone (herd, stalker, gun, landowner) a winner. Shot for bragging rights - load of sh1Te, imo.

Agreed fully, however I really don't have enough information to form an opinion as to which took place in this case yet.

Worth also remembering that there is an entire economy based on this in the highlands, and we're only hearing about this because of a case of 'charismatic megavertebrate syndrome'

Thanks for the post Z-11. I was pretty pissed off when I first read about it but you have made some good points of which I was unaware. Nice to see a balanced argument.

STW, all of life truly is here.

He was firing blanks, so had to go.....

nothing was taken from the kill

It would have been in the freezer by now but I couldn't get the damn thing in the boot of my car, horns were too big weren't they!

All good points Z11, but wouldn't all that be in the news article? something along the lines of "He was past his prime, a danger to the road, and all the stuff about new stags and so-on" rather than the story of "Red deer shot by unknown person."

I know the media put a slant on everything, but surely some-one would've said?

Im with nickc here. Zulu, our points are in agreement IF it was a planned cull for reasons of husbandry. But as nick says Id expect to at least have seen something in the press to indicate something of the sort had taken place.

Have been looking around a little bit - and found this on an old BDS deer bytes - an article from the telegraph from over a year ago...

[I]7 THE EXMOOR EMPEROR - Largest wild animal in Britain is 300lb, 9ft stag
Telegraph.co.uk [B]07.10.09[/B]
The annual mating season for deer is on and the wild stag has been spotted near the Devon-Somerset border. Weighing in at more than 300 lbs - and standing nearly nine feet from hoof to antler-tip - the stag has been identified by a local authority on wild deer as a "truly magnificent" example of the species.

"Red deer stags are the biggest indigenous land animal left in these islands, so it's possible that this is the largest wild animal in the country today," commented Dulverton's [B]Peter Donnelly, who has many years' experience in deer management.[/B] "The deer on Exmoor are larger than the ones in Scotland because of their diet and this is a very fine beast. He's so big and powerful," said Mr Donnelly. "He should be encouraged to breed - under no circumstances should anyone try to hunt or shoot him," added Mr Donnelly. "[B]He's not 'going back' as we call it; he's not getting past it and he's a truly wild animal, not a 'park' stag. "This stag is absolutely in his prime and should be left alone and in peace to have nookie with as many hinds as he can."[/B]

Not that the Emperor will be getting much peace during the next few weeks of the annual rut, when stags vie with one another for the attentions of breeding hinds.
But the real danger comes from trophy hunters, who may wish to bag Britain's biggest beast. In recent weeks two large Exmoor stags have been shot on land owned by fashion and restaurant mogul Richard Caring, who is offering a cash reward of £15,000 for information that may lead to an arrest.

Photographer Richard Austin is keeping the Emperor's location secret. "I've been lucky in getting close to a herd on the fringes of Exmoor where this huge stag has gathered up about 25 hinds. I counted four other stags in the same field and I thought - this is it, this is going to be the best chance I've had in 25 years of photographing stags locking antlers...'

"But the big stag paraded around and none of the other stags seemed brave enough to take him on."
[/I]

So, it seems to me that someone has had a particular bugbear in their hat over this stag for over a year - apparently he was in his prime last year, and definitely not going back... impressively he's still in his prime and not going back this year either.... plus its the same photographer who was involved, very coincidental...

I'm starting to smell bullshite... 😡

same deer expert, saying the same things, same photographer keeping location secret - too many coincidences!

Lazy journalism

The Exmoor Emperor, a giant red stag which is thought to have been [b]the biggest animal in Britain[/b], has been found shot dead in the West Country.

The creature, which weighed more than 135kg (300lb)

That's a lightweight. They should get down to Greggs in Mansfield any lunchtime.

nickc/stoner the problem is that coming up with the actual reasons for shooting that stag at that time and presenting a balanced arguement is not what sells papers.

Discussion on the Jeremy Vine show on R2 was actually pretty balanced as well

Alternatively, some johnnie foreigner paid a huge amount for the trophy head and the farmer/stalker is keeping well out of the way so he doesn't get a hate campaign raging against him and his client

It may not have been a planned cull, may jsut have been an opportunistic shot by a stalker out for a shot on land where he has permission to shoot. It is also possible that the stalker went home to get help to move the carcass, what I am bemused by is this "discovery" or " finding" of the stag, it must have been on private land otherwise it would have been illegal.. I think Z11's bullshit detector may well be on the money..

Kill for sport? that guy has a shoddy respect for life in my book.

Didnt mean you Stoner! 😳

Personally I very much doubt it was done for good reason - otherwise someone would be defending their reason why

Having said that certainly in the highlands deer are vermin and need to be culled far more than they are now as they eat everything

No [i]you[/i] eat everything. 🙁

davidtaylforth - Member

Whenever I slaughter deer, I do it with a sword

my hero !

is a little sad everytime you hear of an animal like that being killed, i dont think i could bring myself to shooting an animal like that, i felt bad when i hit a pheasant early in the morning last sunday !

Hope the stag's head falls off his wall and kills him, after he's suffered food poison from eating any meat

Z-11 appears to be on the right track, there is talk in the papers this morning that this is all bullshit..

With some pantomine red deer costumes, the anti/sab brigade could pull off a blinder here...

"I'm the Emperor Spartacus!"

seems like z11 may have been on to something
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/oct/28/exmoor-emperor-shooting-mystery

i also like the daily mash take on it all....
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/environment/fury-over-death-of-britain%27s-biggest-cow-201010263190/

however this isn't the way that UK game and property laws are written.

This is what pisses me off... 👿

Country landowner = property owner FFS - It's a wild animal.

Used to wind me up as a kid being educated by grandfather's views than no, those salmon, trout and pheasants don't belong to the bloody squire....

oh, and Elfin - nice Fitch

Uh? 😕

Don't understand that. 🙁

Polecat coloured ferret - known as a fitch ferret in dvon & Cornwall (and elsewhere AFAIK)

Oh right. It's not mine sadly. Belongs to WCA's grandson. Podiumed at a ferret show in the New Forest. 🙂

With regards to the numbers in the Highlands TJ I think the winter last year will have helped. We rode through Glen Tilt towards Braemar in May this year and there were lots of carcasses about. The ones we couldn't see, we could smell!