Deer Management

[Tol73]

13 hours ago, woody paul said:

You will find this is food chain as well. 25000 acres on your own or is it a group you run. 

This is on my own. But plenty of ground is just baron. 

[Paul73]

25000 Acres and you want more land? I am saying no to people asking me to shoot their deer because I usually shoot a couple of dozen a year off about 50 acres (more than half of that off 10 of those). That's quite enough to be doing for me as an unpaid hobby. In fact I hardly get out on my own land because there is just too much else to do. 

 

Granted I am creating sink holes in an area of over population that just pull in fresh deer but can you really cover any more ground efficiently in a way that will benefit the landowner or will he have to run another stalker in parallel? 

[Muddy42]

Agreed. I can think of few places where one person could control the deer properly on 25,000 acres. Sure you’ve put the right number of zeros?

[Paul73]

That's the OP's figure from 6 farms. 

 

Assuming he goes out once almost every week,  he will visit each farm 8 times a year. With that much land we could assume he is probably out all Saturday or Sunday morning when he goes This is enough to upset most wives, so as an unpaid hobby that is pretty good going. 

 

Does he average one deer an outing? Most stalkers don't manage an average of one from 2. Are the landowners going to be happy with that few deer coming off the land? The woodland owner needs to look at an offer and decide if that stalker can really make a difference to them or if its a bit of fun for the stalker who likes to collect places to have fun. 

 

I seem to recall reading somewhere that one breeding doe per 5 hectares was average for Roe. On good habitat it is certainly more. That means you have more than one new Roe per year coming off 5 hectares, never mind the Muntjac. They will pour in from land to the sides unless that is well shot too. Take out the big bucks and you just get a lot of youngsters who all like to have a good fray. 

 

A good stalker really can make a difference but it needs dedication to the ground. The owner needs to appreciate this.