muntjac

As I was leaving work on Saturday afternoon a muntjac ran right across the car park and disappeared by the bonfire heap.  It was around first thing this morning, so the gamekeeper was called and the member of staff working in the polytunnel on the far side of the car park evacuated.  Then the dog escaped from the house and ran after the deer, which bolted in a direction where the gamekeeper couldn't get a safe shot at it.  It'll be back.

The question of culling deer is a sensitive one, which conservation bodies like the National Trust and Woodland Trust don't seem keen on addressing head-on.  I can see their dilemma.  Many of their supporters, probably especially town-based ones (the majority of the population) may think that killing deer is cruel and wrong, like of the death of bambi's mother.  But muntjac do an enormous amount of damage in the countryside.  In woodland they graze on the ground level plants such as oxlips to the point where they may be unable to seed, or killed outright, and they eat the emerging shoots of coppice stumps so that traditional woodland management through coppicing may be impossible.  They are equal wreckers of gardens, given half a chance, and damage crops.  Muntjac were only introduced to Britain in the last century, and their numbers are rising rapidly.  Oliver Rackham, fellow of Corpus Christi and one of the leading experts on British woodlands considers damage by deer to be one of the major threats facing our native woods.  So I'm not averse to properly qualified people shooting them, who are licenced to hold firearms and skilful enough to make it a merciful clean shot.  And I don't see how anyone is entitled to say that shooting muntjac is cruel and wrong if they themselves eat factory farmed chickens or battery eggs.