Wild deer set to wreak havoc in UK

[Lurkalot2]

Too many deer , more people using foodbanks , inadequate food parcels for those eligible for free school meals...
If only there were some solution to our problems....

[adam2]

Getting a firearm certificate now involves jumping through even more hoops, so the number of people able to shoot deer will probably fall. I'm unaware of any crimes being committed with deer rifles, but that doesn't seem to matter.

Obtaining a fireams licence is indeed a challenge and therefore only a small number of people hold such a licence. However we dont need many people with guns to control deer numbers.
A few dozen people over the whole country each of whom kills a dozen or two deer a week would soon make an imppression on the numbers, and make the animals more wary of people.
No need to eliminate the deer, culling half of them in many areas, perhaps three quarters in some cases would help.

[adam2]

Too many deer , more people using foodbanks , inadequate food parcels for those eligible for free school meals...
If only there were some solution to our problems....

"needy parents SHOCKED at plans to shoot Bambi to put into food parcells"

[kenneal - lagger]

There has got to be a business opportunity here. Obviously the deer are free to take, I'm less sure on the processing, distribution and disposal.

There was one until the supermarkets killed off the local butchers who would take one or two carcases at a time. Supermarkets will only take animals through one or two centralised abattoirs at a rate of hundreds of animals at a time so Joe Shooter just doesn't cut the mustard for the supermarkets I'm afraid.

I can remember seeing rabbits, pigeons and deer hanging up in local butchers all over the place in my youth. You still see the occasional butchers shop and even more occasionally you might see game hanging in them. We have a local game dealer who takes in game, obviously, for processing but his business has slowed down one hell of a lot. He also does my home killing and butchering for me.

[kenneal - lagger]

I had posted the original link onto our local West Berkshire Climate Action Network Facebook page and it was inundated with horrified posts from the "Militant Vegan Tendency" to such an extent that the moderators closed the thread. The vegans were annoyed that their "sensitivities" weren't being catered to as well as the fact that "poor, harmless" bambi was being slaughtered for meat for humans to eat. It is OK, apparently, for them to be pulled apart alive by wolves but not relatively humanely shot by humans.

I posted the same as a warning on the Lockdown Wood page, a page for organising the planting of trees locally to sequester carbon, and had a sensible conversation with quite a few people on the necessity to control the numbers of various sorts of wildlife because we humans had taken out the population controlling carnivores. Then the vegans joined in and things got ridiculous again.

Apparently animals have rights. What they are and who gave them those rights has yet to be explained but I am about to ask. I will give you an update later.

[careful_eugene]

There has got to be a business opportunity here. Obviously the deer are free to take, I'm less sure on the processing, distribution and disposal.

There was one until the supermarkets killed off the local butchers who would take one or two carcases at a time. Supermarkets will only take animals through one or two centralised abattoirs at a rate of hundreds of animals at a time so Joe Shooter just doesn't cut the mustard for the supermarkets I'm afraid.

I can remember seeing rabbits, pigeons and deer hanging up in local butchers all over the place in my youth. You still see the occasional butchers shop and even more occasionally you might see game hanging in them. We have a local game dealer who takes in game, obviously, for processing but his business has slowed down one hell of a lot. He also does my home killing and butchering for me.

We (my wife) still use a butcher rather than getting it from the supermarket, I'll ask whether they have any or are asked about it.

[Lurkalot2]

I can remember seeing rabbits, pigeons and deer hanging up in local butchers all over the place in my youth.

Same here , and the rabbits were hung with their skin on . My father always used to say that was so they wouldn't be able to sell skinned cats.
We used to keep rabbits for meat at one time . Large white Californians , my father taught me to kill and skin them and i taught myself to tan the skins. I had a rabbit some time ago but the comments from some of the family would think it was a newborn baby i was eating.

[BritDownUnder]

I can remember game hanging up at the local butchers in Retford in the 1970s.
Wild deer are slowly becoming a problem in Australia too but there is more of a hunting presence here so I think they will get shot if they get too numerous.

It looks from this Grauniad article that Bison (more correctly Wisent) are being introduced in the UK for the first time in 6000 years.
A Bison on the loose would be real havoc I think!
Roll on the wooly Mammoth and those Nazi-bred Heck/Auroch cattle that the Daily Mail wrote about a while ago.

I think bison would be good for Australia - apparently there are a few on farms here already.

[kenneal - lagger]

Our local militant vegan friends would have us ask those bison not to rub against trees so that they don't kill them and ask them to take contraceptive pills so that they don't breed too much. At least I think that it what they said. Surely they wouldn't want to abuse the animals' right by forceably sterilizing them like some fascist regime would, would they?

[kenneal - lagger]

I am told by one of our militant vegan friends that veganism isn't a way of eating but a "social movement." Some of 1.6% of the population thinks that they have a right to foist a meat free diet on the rest of us.