Venison & deer stalking – your views please

I actually spoke to a gamekeeper in East Anglian who once went up to Scotland to help out shooting from a helicopter due to some unique “management needs”.

Cue “Ride of the Valkyrie”.

We occasionally had a haunch in the shop, but theres not much call for venison in the east end of Glasgow. Chopped pork yup(thin cut), but venison hasn’t reached that far east yet.

I was surprised that marks and spencer didnt stock Scottish venison, relying on imported. I brought that up with them, but it fell on deaf ears. Although Im retired from the trade, I will hold the banner.

Something I make for myself is filled venison ‘kievs’ Made from finely minced 95% lean(about 6oz) its easier for me to buy a premade product and adapt it). Being sticky it holds a liquid contents during cooking in the oven. Garlic butter works well as does a cheese sauce, though its best they’re frozen before you put it in. I wrap smoked bacon around the parcel, then into tinfoil to keep its shape for the first 20mins, and off to brown it.About 45mins total,200c.(reduce heat at the end)
Cut open the sauce runs out.

Ok. I could have written “shooting deer at night is prohibited under normal circumstances without a licence from Natural England, SNH or whatever” yada yada, but thought for the purposes of brevity and this thread that what I wrote was adequate. You are more correct, well done.

Child

Speaking as a hand-wringing vegetarian snowflake whose opinion is therefore as relevant here as a “yes but bacon” comment in a vegan thread, I’ve every respect for anyone who hunts their own food.

Sorry, I’ve nothing helpful to add.

I always wanted to try Venison, but cannot afford it. I just find it too Deer!

It’s dead deer. Half a joke.

I’m a vegetarian deer stalker, how ’bout that ? lol.

Child

Wow. You have a nice day mate.

Wow. You have a nice day mate

Not being funny bud, but you stated an incorrect fact so I simply corrected you. You followed that up by making out you were simplifying, and that there were “grades” of correct when you were simply wrong.
You ended with a sarcastic comment to make me out some sort of pedant.

Grow up. You were incorrect, own it.

It seems madness to me to farm an animal that is so abundant in the wild

It’s much easier to round up and slaughter 50 animals in a field than to hunt each one down in the woods or mountains!

I do like venison — in fact it’s been my Christmas meat of choice for decades, over turkey. Had a good local ish butcher, they then closed; took me ages to find another good and good value source – finally did. Also in NE Scotland. When I get order from them, usually get the whole pension menu – sausages, burgers, diced for stew – as well. They also do a mean black pudding which is the icing on the cake really.

@swavis – the butcher wouldn’t be local to you (Dufftown) but they do deliver for no cost. It’s as cheap as I’ve found locally (and I’ve been round quite a few – closest otherwise for quality/cost is Tawse in Rothes).

Grow up. You were incorrect, own it.

Go back and have a read. I acknowledged you were correct in my first response to you. You replied with personal insults. I suspect, based on the glimpses of your personality you have provided, that you will be absolutely desperate to have the last word. Fill your boots, I’m done. And I wish you (genuinely) a nice day.

You did everything except admit you were wrong (not that I was arsed) and made a sarcastic comment to boot.
Please stop trying to ruin an interesting thread.

Love venison, family shoot them locally for the pot, with it shared with the farmer. Find the idea of farming them odd as they are an abundant resource that need managing.
A very good source of protein and not intensively farmed.
Never bought it in shops as I know the across the board £/kg price to a dealer! It’s seen as an expensive luxury food when it’s not expensive to produce.

I imagine it’s far easier to get big retailers to take farmed , tagged animals.

TL:DR I like venison, it tastes great. I’d buy it if the provenance was clear.

PS I hit one just north of Ullapool once and it wrote my car off. The git just hobbled off into the dark night with it’s mates.

We used to get venison and lamb via the local estate. Always assumed someone was fiddling the numbers somewhere as they always came with way more legs and shoulders than they should 🤣.

It was a NT estate, they didn’t do “stalking”, just waited in a cleering at dusk and shot them like fish in a barrel. Used to laugh at those north of the border who charged a fortune to take the public on a long walk across a bog to achieve the same thing!

We get fantastic venison burgers and sausages from a neighbour who shoots them locally (Mendips/Bristol). Have also got a few skinned carcasses off him for friends who do their own butchery during lock down. He is contracted for management of various estates and takes a lot of care to shoot the appropriate animals and does so with regard to minimise any suffering which aligns with our own attitude to the sheep and pigs we breed on our smallholding and sell to friends and neighbours.

Tried it once in the Highlands about 17 years ago. Went veggie more or less straight afterwards , but remember that I liked it and would eat it again.
If I was to ever eat another mammal again, it would only be wild -shot game. No offense to farmers as I understand theres more to farming than just the endgame of loading them onto the slaughter trucks, but I couldnt morally eat another farmed sentient being again.
Right up until the point it feels the bullet impact, that deer is living the life it was born to, which is more than can be said for most of us. In the absence of major predators here in UK (unless you count the big cats…which is another story) , deer numbers would spiral out of control fairly soon. They are not small animals and can and do cause serious damage to forestry etc, or so I have heard.
Having said that, I have not seen such a magnificent site as camping out during the rut in the Highlands years ago.
Until we run out of veg then theyre safe from harm from me, but the moment they become food, then yes, I’d eat venison again in a heartbeat.

@johnnymarone good post. My wife of 34 years has been vegetarian since before I met her. She’s far happier with me eating game I’ve shot than meat bought in a supermarket. So am I.

I’ve done a lot of soul searching over this, and could easily become vegetarian myself. If and until I do, I will try to source the highest welfare meat I can. Ethically I have no issue with wild venison, particularly when you consider that the alternative to a bullet, a “natural” death for deer in predator free UK is disease, RTA, starvation in winter etc.

It is free range, organic, sustainable, minimal food miles and carbon footprint and right up to the moment it dies has never known captivity and all that goes with it. I get massively wound up when someone tells me shooting and eating wild game is cruel, but will happily buy a broiler chicken or cheap sausages from Tesco.

I was at a Deer farm in Azerbaijan where the primary produce was not the meat or skins but damned if I can remember what.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Jannat+Baghi/@40.8537207,48.9194347,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1sAF1QipMxZnTrmzSxMyIaOr4ccrOEXlkI8I_64IxfRNez!2e10!3e12!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMxZnTrmzSxMyIaOr4ccrOEXlkI8I_64IxfRNez%3Dw203-h114-k-no!7i2688!8i1520!4m16!1m7!3m6!1s0x40307d6bd6211cf9:0x343f6b5e7ae56c6b!2sBaku,+Azerbaijan!3b1!8m2!3d40.4092617!4d49.8670924!3m7!1s0x4037597442b05ac1:0xc653283aa90eeea7!5m2!4m1!1i2!8m2!3d40.8537191!4d48.9194369

The deer …
https://goo.gl/maps/CKk1uJRRMC3KXZy7A

I seek it out from my local butcher. I enjoy it occasionally particularly as loin steak but can get bored with the stewing meat pretty quickly. I’d love to feed my lab on it if there was a cheaper source.

I’m sorting some out for others just now and it has reminded me how much I love the neck turned into a good broth.

Still not doing it though. That’s a year veggie for me now.

We used to get venison and lamb via the local estate. Always assumed someone was fiddling the numbers somewhere as they always came with way more legs and shoulders than they should 🤣

Not the Drax estate is it with their 5 legged deer? 😉

As an Aside, I really believe that any licensed FAC holder should be allowed to go into the highlands and shoot a deer.
Tickets should be issued to allow 1 or 2 deer and numbers and locations of tickets issued should be controlled by local authorities.

Estates are greed personified when it comes to stalking, which is basically pest control.( Glen Feshie helicopter fiasco is a case in point. I discussed this with the factors office and the greed shone through)
I have never ever paid for stalking and I never will.

I love venison. An ex’s dad was an itinerant reindeer herder in northern Norway. He used to wander with his herds through the Finmark, into Russia and back.
She always had loads of fresh or cured meat sent to her.
Then came Chernobyl and he had to stop selling the meat so he turned to setting up rodeos and showing off their riding/herding skills with his workers.

so, had a 30kg larder weight fallow dropped off a couple of days ago, and the missus and I skinned and butchered it using YouTube as a guide. it wasnt as bad as I thought it might have been. there’s a lot of meat. most of it is going to be raw food for the dog but we are going to keep some for us. this is for practice, the stalker has more than he can deal with so hopefully the next one we will have a better idea of what to do.
re comments above, shot placement was perfect, straight through the heart. looking forward to trying some.

Where we are the forestry is being harvested and with no proper culling it’s being predicted that even more deer will come down this winter and eat our foliage and gardens.

@porter_jamie – not sure if you found the Scott Rae project on YouTube – very good demos of butchery and how to break down a deer carcass.

@dashed exactly that one

all the poor practices associated with some highland estates.

Not sure this is a fair statement to make, without any proof. “Some estates” is a bit all encompassing 😕

Its pretty obvious if you go out in the hills which estates have “poor practices” ie too many head of deer so eroded overgrazed landscapes of low biodiversity or muirburn for driven grouse shoots leading to erosion and lack of biodiversity. You can often see the change along fencelines / boundaries

As an Aside, I really believe that any licensed FAC holder should be allowed to go into the highlands and shoot a deer.

That’s a very naive and ill informed comment.

Most FAC holders shoot .22lr and .17hmr. The regulations around deer stalking dictate ballistic set points:

Minimum bullet weight 100 grains
Minimum muzzle energy 1750 ft/lbs
Minimum muzzle velocity 2450 ft/s

So essentially .243 and above.

My stepfather and BIL both have licenses to cull deer in Devon, so venison is plentiful and I really like it. My vegetarian son eats it since it is ethically sourced.

In Richmond Park, they used to bury the culled animals I believe. Not sure if they manage to sell all of the cull now. https://www.frp.org.uk/deer-cull-royal-parks-advice/

@TiRed there is no licence to shoot deer as such. Obviously you need one to have the gun with the correct condition on it. but you dont go and get a licence to shoot deer like you would in say the us.

@derek_starship there is a minimum calibre too. and as you ably pointed out there are minimum legal requirements to shoot deer. anyone with an fac knows they live on their licence conditions and would know the minimum requirement and surely that’s not the point the chap above was making anyway, not naive at all. I’d probably insist on dsc qualification as a minimum though.
his point was the deer population isnt managed properly/centrally with any kind of joined up thinking, it’s down to the local landowner. I’m not sure I’d want random people wandering across my land, shooting at anything that moved however but there needs to be a different approach, I agree.

That’s a very naive and ill informed comment.

Far from it. I’m very well informed and not naive in the slightest. 30 yrs of shooting and stalking should mean I know the requirements better than most. Including the googlers.

I think it would be stupid to assume someone with a 22lr is going to hunt a deer and that was not what I was saying anyway. Massively wrong assumption made on your part I’m afraid.

In other countries, hunters can apply to shoot a number of head of deer a year and then carry out that cull as and when.
Suitably licensed hunters here should be able to do the same thing.

As it stands, culls are not completed due to money issues and estates hate the thought of ordinary people being able to hunt a deer, worse still, without giving them money.

Stuck up attitudes and greed are the biggest cause of deer issues in Scotland and are the reason the Gov’t bodies have had to step in and slaughter huge numbers.

@TiRed there is no licence to shoot deer as such

Sorry I meant relevant qualifications from I forget which organisation (game and wildlife conservation trust?). And a FAC too, obviously.

Including the googlers.

Not me.

.22 250 and hundreds of foxes. I am very experienced and knowledgeable.

another one arrived, smaller one this time. missus and i are getting, well less bad i suppose at dealing with it (compared to the chap in the youtube video). got a vac pack machine which is really good. we have a mincing attachment for the food processor so looking forward to trying our hand at burgers and things.
the freezer probably has room for another big one. all this should keep the dog going for months 🙂

Missed this thread first time around but…

I had a venison steak last night and, as a joke to myself, my veggies were a vegan steak from Tesco.

…is hilarious!

I like a venison stew now and then. Some of the prices charged are a bit steep though. For anyone in the Glasgow area best I have found is The Fish Plaice in Byres Rd and The Saltmarket. Diced venison at £10Kg frozen or £12 fresh.

Compares to online sources at anything up to £17 a Kg

As an Aside, I really believe that any licensed FAC holder should be allowed to go into the highlands and shoot a deer.

See also rabbits. Bloody pests and prolific to boot, I already have a certificate for my air rifle, I’d happily get a FAC or specific licence if it meant I was deemed competent to shoot the buggers wherever rather than the elusive permission.

I don’t see it as any different to existing foraging laws.