Deer Friends and Enemies -What’s Behind Colin’s Culling?
The Odd Business of Killing and Eating Deer in Britain
By SternWriter
On our morning constitutional the other day, Mr. Rolf and I were walking along the kind of single-file path that, even pre-Covid, demanded awkward manoeuvering to pass oncoming walkers.
But viral transmission was not on my mind when we came across a man blocking our way, dressed in full camouflage and wielding a powerful rifle topped with what looked like a military-grade sniper’s night-vision scope. Don’t be alarmed, this isn’t the story of how Q-Anon has spread to Salisbury. That’s coming soon. Mr. Rolf and I come across this bloke regularly. We greet each other by name, and quickly resume our regular back-and-forth about the current state of grumpiness of the local farmers regarding pest control.
We enjoy these chats in different ways. They’re actually more Q&A than conversation, 90% information flowing from him to me, punctuated by my ocasional questions. He enjoys explaining the little-appreciated minutiae of real rural life and educating me on wildlife. I, a curious, and I believe open-minded, born-and-bred Londoner who’s lived in other megacities around the world before moving to Wiltshire more than two decades ago, am always curious about my new home’s rural rhythms and hidden worlds. In particular, I enjoy trying to apply standard economic logic to ‘country matters’, and in turn he relishes my perplexed responses to his patient explanations.
He was quite wary at first, as he’s understandably tired of city folk berating him for matters about which he (quite rightly ) thinks we know very little. City slickers, long out of touch with rural culture, view his daily life as some kind of obsolete, quaint tradition. Once he realized I genuinely want to understand, he dropped his defensive attitude and soon started to rather enjoy humouring my naive and ignorant questions.w
Still, he’s rather not be quoted on what he sees as a very sensitive and divisive issue, so I’ll call him Colin, because that’s how I misheard his name the first time we met under such circumstances, before my ear was attuned to Proper Wiltshire. He was in fact telling me he was ‘cullin’’…
‘Colin’ is Wiltshire through-and-through, a real countryman. He appears to know every farmer within 20 miles of Salisbury, and possesses a multitude of country and conservation skills for them to call upon. With gun and shooting licenses hard to come by in the UK, he and his fearsome-looking rifle are often in demand whenever local farmers want to get rid of pests, be they pigeons, rabbits, crows, magpies, or — as was the case today — deer. Basically, whenever local farmers find they’re losing too much crop to nibbling deer, they give him and his son, a chip off the old block, a buzz. Were Colin fonder of wordplay, and did this complex arrangement not depend on phone calls, personal networks, and cross-generational bona fides, and hence not require a brand name, Colin might has advertised this service as The Cull of the Wild.
This morning, after doing the Covid Shuffle, Colin retreats, and props his gun against his pickup, parked in a field of winter wheat a few yards back. Mr. Rolf and I join him there. I strap my imaginary 2m Covid spear to my chest and we settle into chat mode. Over the years, often as the blood of a freshly-killed deer congeals in the back of his pickup, Colin has taught me a lot about his parallel rural universe. Even in a small city like Salisbury, surrounded by villages, I find it amazing how much remains hidden beyond our field of vision, or rather vision of field. Moreover, there’s a particular matter on which I’ve been intending to consult him the next time we we met.
While Mr. Rolf sits on his best behaviour, hoping the meaty aromas might herald a treat, I mention a news article I’d seen about an unexpected Covid impact on arable farmers. Who better to put flesh on the bones of a news story, I thought, pleased with myself, but remembering wordplay tended to draw a blank with Colin. I ask if it was true that the restaurant trade’s collapse really has sent venison prices plummeting.
Too bloody right, he says. Less venison means more deer, more deer mean more crop damage, and more crop damage means more culling for Colin. He and his son were being inundated with calls from farmers in despair over excess deer and their ruinous nibbling.
So you must be ripping through a whole bunch of ammo, I banter, arms akimbo and legs spread, adopting the blokey posture assumed by Alan Partridge when talking to builders. Like Alan, I do enjoy picking up jargon, pretending to know what I’m talking about and basking in the warm glow of uncomplicated masculinity.
A familiar hesitation, a slow intake of breath and a glance to the sky. This usually prefaces a polite explanation of how I’m totally wrong. My Partridge bubble burst, I fold my arms and revert to listening mode.
Farmers don’t pay him to kill the deer, he explains, but he gets paid by supplying the carcasses to licensed butchers who sell to the restaurants. Pre-Covid they paid £2.50 a kilo, but even though venison still retails at £20 in the shops, he’s now lucky to find a butcher prepared to pay £1.
Why not just shoot more deer?, I ask, gaining confidence and tentatively placing one hand on a hip.
The cost of the diesel, ammunition and time mean it’s just not worth it, he says, glancing at the bed of his pickup, piled high with hunting gubbins. Anyway, you can’t just go out and slaughter a field full of deer, there are heaps of restrictions. For example, it’s illegal to shoot deer after dark, even though night-vision scopes would make it much easier and quicker. We both briefly attempt, and fail, to work out the purpose of this law, as killing a deer out of the blue at night seems more humane than pursuing it for miles in daylight. But whatever the law’s logic, it’s strictly enforced, and even in the apparently deserted woodlands of Wiltshire, a night-time rifle shot would be quickly noted and investigated.
It turns out that red tape isn’t even the real issue. As so often in my attempts to understand Colin’s world, it dawns on me that the intangible benefit of the ‘sporting’ element involving anything to do with game shooting defies the application of any conventional market economics. My efforts to do so always amuse him as much as they baffle me.
Let’s see…Deer are a ‘free’ wild resource. They are a cost farmers have to absorb in the form of their nibbling. But deer are also a monopoly in the exclusive possession of the farmers, because hunters need permission to shoot on their land. Yet, even though permission to shoot is a scarce monopoly resource, hunters don’t necessarily pay for it.
Colin has told me about this before. Anglers are aware of the global status Wiltshire’s geology has bestowed on our local waterways — our chalk-bed streams and rivers are unique ecosystems, evoking awe and envy from fishing fanatics around the world.
Fewer still are aware that the same thing applies to our deer. Even deer hunters from Germany, with its vast expanses of forest teeming with deer begging to be culled, are prepared to pay thousands of pounds to come over here and kill ours. Indeed, another of Colin’s sidelines is acting Tonto to German Lone Rangers. When you stop to think about it, it’s basic chemistry — much chalk = big heap calcium = big bones = big antlers = Big Game, Kemo Sabe.
Big estates geared up for commercial diversification, especially in premium areas like Wiltshire and Hampshire, can charge tens of thousands of pounds for such premium deer hunting licenses, but these are the exception rather than the rule. Most smaller farmers take a less commercial view, and happily to barter access to their land in return for ridding their fields of pests that are nibbling away their primary income source.
As for the hunters, they take a similarly laissez-faire view, and are prepared to break even, or even make a loss, because shooting deer is fun. But not enough fun to do it at £1 a kilo. All clear now?
At this point Colin’s son emerges from the trees, bearing a rifle of even more buttock-clenching dimensions. Joining our conversation, he says, with a shake of his head, that only one Salisbury supermarket sells local venison. The rest all import farmed venison from New Zealand.
So it’s cheaper to farm deer in New Zealand and ship their meat across the planet than to shoot wild deer a couple of miles from Waitrose? Yup. It seems my efforts to understand the complexities of the rural economy had left me more confused than when I started.
I was going to ask what they thought of reintroducing wolves to Salisbury, as I’d read somewhere that a small number of wolves can dramatically reduce crop damage caused by deer, on account of the latter fearing death while nibbling.
But by now Mr. Rolf was straining at his leash. Son picked up his fearsome firearm, father picked up his his, I unstrapped my spear, and our universes resumed their parallel courses.
This article was first published on the See Through Wiltshire Facebook Group . For similar posts on global issues, visit www.seethroughnews.org.
