Well said, agree 100% with all of the above.

This makes me terribly sad -

''Another local, who asked not to be named, said: "You'd often see him there, he was huge but had got so tame you could almost walk up to him.

"For anyone wanting to shoot him, it would have been an easy task to get in close and do it, which makes his death horribly unsporting."

Even professional deer stalkers, said concerns about the shooting of Emperor were unjustified, admitted they would not target such well-known animals simply as a trophy. ''

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wil...a-mystery.html

The fact is it was done during a protected season (OK, un-offical, but it should be) and was done purely for sport. The evidence of this is that the coward scarpered without his 'prize'!

I think killing animals for sport is disgusting and anyone who does it cannot call themselves a true animal lover.

Thats not a good thing

There are animal lovers and there are animal keepers.

rune

Good question. All the poultry we have are livestock, not pets (whether they are eaten or not). Most don't have names.

All our animals are cared for the same, whether they are destined for the oven or not. I'm not sure whether I 'love' our chickens (well, not the one who pecks my legs when I'm feeding her anyway) the same as my dogs.

I can tell you that when we slaughtered our turkeys last year, the only way to keep them calm and docile was for me to lay on the floor with them with my arms wrapped round them, and speak calmly to them, whilst my husband killed them.
So that's what I did. They all died with me laid down with them on the floor, hugging and talking to them.

If I have to kill a hen for medical reasons, they are afforded the same dignity. A quiet, warm place, their favourite treat, hugs and kind words, and a swift death. It's all I can do as their owner.

Thanks. The Christmas slaughter (and indeed any we do) isn't pleasant; however, if people want to eat turkey (or chicken, duck, or goose etc) then someone, somewhere has to kill it.

I'd much rather eat a bird that has had a nice life, being well looked after, and, dare I say it, mollycoddled a bit; and I know what has happened to it from hatch to being in my oven.

I've been on game shoots before, and I can say that the majority of people on there are the same as me. The only difference is that I raise the birds in my garden and kill them with my hands; they go out and, with infinitely more skill than I have, take the bird from the wild (albeit stocked-up wood).

Excally.Its quality of life which is important.

A chap i used to work with would have a dig at me because i shoot a lot of rabbits/woodpigeon on various farms and he thought it was cruel-even though he knew i sell them to a local butcher.Then in the next breath would be saying that he'd bought a pack of 4 chicken breasts from Lidl for £1.50.He wouldnt achknowledge that the chickens would have lived in pittiful conditions somewhere in Europe where animal welfare is zero for the supermarket to sell them at such a low price.

The only thing i dont sell are corvids,squirrels and foxes cos they're not edible and have no value.

No I helped with a fallow. I have also never looked to google for answers, if I dont know the answers, then I dont know them.. end of. I have also never once stated I know everything about deer, or deer management.. Im still learning, Im learning more about caring for sick and injuried deer/and other wild animals, and keeping them well while in captivity.. not how they behave in the wild. Although I know they lie in holes, the photo you posted DIDNT show that so your 'trick' worked

I shall leave you all now, I have to go out to discuss sperm collection and stud dogs!! Thats another subject entirely.

Please know, my comments are not personal, just proving my point to you all.

Well it seems as much as I'm not keen on Dawn's particular methods of sensationalism, it really does equate to the sensationalism that prompted this thread.

Anyone who wants to comment on the people who take their time and effort to help maintain species conservation in viable numbers in this country, really needs to spend a bit of time learning and talking to those people. If you spent a few minutes even, talking to anyone who is involved with any type of shoot, stalking etc, their love of the environment and the quarry species shines through, they admire what they hunt, and don't ever want to annihilate a species.

Can you say the same of the person who chucks a chicken in their trolley down at the local supermarket? How many day old chicks die simply because they are born male, and yet the way wildlife is managed and has been managed over time, and proven to be effective, is held to judge, jury and executioner, because fluffy animals have to die to help keep viable populations? And yet no-one thinks of that when they buy their eggs, or two for a fiver chickens, that fluffy chicks were gassed at a day old simply for their gender??

One of those is very right, the other is very wrong. Rune posted a very valid point, their are animal lovers and there are animal keepers, but missed an important point, those who keep animals well, also love them.

For those interested, a few facts and the view point, from a professional deer stalker......

Deer stalking in this country is done in different ways depending on the objectives of the land owner, and carried out in varying methods depending on the location, terrain, species, and purpose for the need to cull deer.

They all share one common objective though, and that is to manage the population of that particular species, and maintain a balance of numbers which assures a healthy herd which the environment that supports them can sustain, and to protect that environment from damage.
The indigenous species of deer in this country have no other natural predators any more, only us.

With the modern age of instant information, there has come an equal and opposite supply of instant misinformation. That is, when something is inaccurately reported before the actual truth is produced, everyone already believes the misguided version.

The recent case of the “Exmoor Emperor” is a classic example of this.

Newspaper headlines like “Britain’s largest animal shot dead” and “Emperor murdered in cold blood”, are typical journalist rubbish in an attempt to sell more copies. Unfortunately, sensationalist headlines like this actually have the desired effect, regardless of the accuracy of the content within the article.

The Red deer is the largest species native to this country. The “Emperor” was a Red deer, but certainly not the largest one in the country, but you can see how easily it was misconstrued as such.

There are currently somewhere in the region of 1.5 million wild deer in the UK, of which around 350,000 are legally culled every year. This is done out of necessity.
There are very strict regulations and laws concerning how this is done, ensuring it’s carried out by professional people who are qualified and certified, and almost ALL of the venison produced from it is put into the human food chain.

There is no dedicated government body which singly maintains this cull, it’s done and financed pretty much universally by private land owners.

This is where the sporting aspect has its place.

Selling accompanied sporting stalking greatly helps finance the management of deer in this country, and has further reaching financial benefit to all areas where stalking takes place.
The witness reports regarding the stag on Exmoor largely describe what appears to have been a perfectly legitimate stalking exercise. The “throat cutting” and carcass removal all sound very much like the animal was being correctly prepared for the food chain by “bleeding” and “gralloching” where the pooled blood and Viscera were removed form the carcass as soon as possible after death to ensure no contamination.

There is no law or indeed any recommendation as to which age of animals should be shot, but it is generally accepted by many that older animals are best removed before they suffer age related problems, this would also mirror the natural selection process by other predators.
The Exmoor stag was reported to have been 12 years old and was shot during the Rut.
12 years is pretty old for a red stag, despite what the aforementioned journalists will have you believe, and he’ll have had at least 6 years previously to pass on his genes. The rut falls within the legal season when you can cull deer, so again there is no wrong doing with that aspect.

Having “celebrity deer” such as this beast are what causes public hysteria, most people are quite simply otherwise uninterested, and never hear of what happens in the countryside until something is brought to the media’s attention, not realising this is no different to the other 349,999+ deer legally shot in the same year.

This is a stag from by us, this was almost 3yrs ago and I can tell you now, he is a lot bigger then than "The Emporer." He is about 9/10yrs I think, and noticibly lacking in condition this year. His antlers are bigger than in the pic too.

http://www.chasewater.org.uk/images/...10-07%20PW.jpg

http://www.chasewater.org.uk/images/...10-07%20PW.jpg

No, it's your ability to eat meat, and yet criticise those who do go out and shoot or kill animals that end up on the table. Would you eat meat if someone else didn't kill it for you?

I enjoy eating meat, I don't shoot, but I don't have any qualms about plucking and drawing game birds, or skinning rabbits etc, and will put an animal out of it's misery eg myxi rabbits etc, rather than leave them to suffer a slow and painful death.

Bare hands? I have never killed anything with my bare hands, are you saying I have?

Bare hands that hold a gun, I don't mean wringing it's neck although I know plenty of hunt scum who do

Its not so long ago you were starting threads like "Why is my puppy so horrible" hardly the talk of an understand animal lover is it? Now before you go moaning about me mentioning that, take a good look at yourself and the way you felt about your own dog at times, before you presume you know about how others feel about animals that they dont own!! There it is again, HYPOCRISY!

Hahah, you're hilarious. A new dog owner who was adjusting to her new, difficult to manage puppy and had trouble with it is not an animal lover? What a far, desperate stretch to prove a point Dawn. That literally takes the biscuit. You've made yourself loook like a right knob saying that.

EVERYTHING I have shot was shot for vermin control or management, the Woodies my friend eats, the Squirrels are put back onto the farmers land with his consent for the Foxes (GASP HORROR! YES FEEDING THEM IMAGINE THAT!!!) the others are incinerated.

Everyone is still learning, if they're not they may as well give up on life, and thats about everything, not just deers

Posting and dashing as I've got a ton of work to get on with, but was chatting to the head keeper of a grouse moor yesterday, he used to work on a large estate in Scotland as a professional keeper, part of which included deer stalking.

Deer are counted after the rut, and numbers submitted to the Deer Commission, who provide a cull number, so that part is nothing to do with the land owner/estate manager. Deer stalkers take out guests who pay to shoot the stags, any hinds are usually shot by the stalkers. If the estate doesn't manage to cull the number set by the Deer Commission, they will send in their own team, who are much less humane in their methods, and will bill the estate for the time and money involved. It's really quite simple then to see the estate/land owner can either benefit financially, and so put money back into the land, or they actually have to pay the deer commission, whose employers do not have the same knowledge as their own staff, and may not cull the most appropriate animals.

Interestingly, switch tops, where the antlers lack tyne's that will lock when fighting other stags, are to be shot on sight, they are considered such a danger to other deer.

To true Chaz, Just a shame some on here take the p!ss out of others for not knowing everything. I havent claimed to, nor think I do. I like what I do and I like learning. I for sure dont think I know everything about anything, such a shame that cant be said for others on here - who would rather laugh at others mistakes instead of helping them learn/or share what they know

I wish this was true! I live in a very rural area, and our next door neighbours have lost (this year alone) about 20 hens - most in one attack, plus 2 newborn goats to some foxes. We've found places in our fenceline where a fox has been digging to get into our bird area (the wire fence is sunk into the ground).

We are lucky that down the road is a game hatchery, and their boys are handy with vermin disposal. They patrol their acreage in the night and have found foxes and badgers breaking into their poultry sheds etc. Of course, the vermin have been shot. Our next door neighbour now also has a licence, and has killed at least 2 foxes this year (after the goats were taken) that he caught trying to get into their henhouse.

I've know of a badger that has ripped a henhouse apart to get to the birds inside, and a fox who killed over 30 birds in a night - there is no such thing as living with these creatures if you want to keep livestock safely.

I hope your neighbour hasn't been shooting badgers - they are a protected species!