High time for a cull

Stalking as a team is an excellent way to get on top of deer numbers but it can be difficult to know whom to invite, says Graham Downing

- Graham Downing

Team culling accounts for the largest proportion of the deer that are killed on the estates where I do most of my stalking. The reason for this is pretty obvious.

Someone like me, getting on the ground about once a week, can only devote a limited amount of time to shooting deer and I can only be in one place at a time. But if I get a small team of capable and experienced Rifles and place them in good positions, morning and evening, over two or three successive days, I can multiply the opportunities for a useful cull. Instead of a single Rifle bringing two or three carcasses to the larder, it is reasonable to expect half-a-dozen stalkers to bring 20 over three days.

It’s been a strange year for group culls. Usually, my two busiest months are February and March, after the game shooting season has finished and the woods have quietened down, but while the understorey is still bare of leaf and it is still easy to see small deer, such as muntjac.

This year, I managed to sneak in one March cull before lockdown. Even though I could lawfully continue individual shooting operations for the purposes of pest control, it was impractical to invite a team to do what we usually do — staying together over two or three days, sharing meals and transport and working in the larder.