December 4th, 2013

On Thursday I managed to travel up to Badanloch Estate in Sutherland to meet up with Brian Lyall and his team. I was spending the day on the hill with Brian and was hoping to shoot a hind or two and help him with his hind cull. When we arrived at the bothy we were warmly greeted by the young stalkers and ghillie who were full of enthusiasm and pride for their estate which is right in the heart of the flow country. 
After a day on the hill with Brian we covered many of the species of flora and fauna that occur in this part of the country. For many years now, through Brian’s enthusiasm and hard work, the estate has been carrying out habitat assessment plans and impact assessments. The environmental designations on this estate are many and need to be managed accordingly.
 Some of the hinds we shot that day were used for gathering more data. We collected blood, faeces and rumen samples. This would help the scientists in their quest to gather more information and maybe inform the future management of the deer. Some of this work was picking up early signs of the deer lacking in certain trace elements. 
Modern stalkers continue to show they have the knowledge to manage their estates with passion and a broad interest in the many species of animals and plants, as opposed to the way they have been painted recently in some quarters. Driving down the glen that evening I couldn’t but help wonder if this would be the case if Rob Gibson was to succeed in his quest of bringing deer management groups in Scotland into a statutory regime. I began to think of a scary futuristic vision where papers had to be checked and a government weapon issued on arrival as no weapons would be owned by the public in Scotland by this time.
 Thankfully the vision didn’t last and my attention was alerted elsewhere and to the road home. What it did make me realise was how mad it is that we constantly have the environmental movement, assisted by influential figures, attacking estates but it is these estates, in many cases, which have a far more diverse ecology, species range and habitat. Maybe the time has come to compare the ground that we manage seven days of the week with the likes of the ground that the Environmental Link group manages collectively. When some of the conservation bodies acquired land some years ago, the SGA requested that some inventory should be done at the time to allow some form of base-line as to whether their management was benefiting wildlife in general and not some single species. As far as we are aware, no base-lines were ever established and the work was never done. One of the features on BBC’s Out of Doors last week was a discussion on mountain hares and why estates were reducing the numbers.
There was the usual desperation to lay the blame at the gamekeepers’ door. Grouse moors cull hares to control tick but this is done each year in a way that still maintains sustainable populations.
 In their rush to blame the keeper it was never mentioned that unless the poor hares have a strong programme of predator control to guard them, they would now be extinct. Indeed, you would struggle to find any at all on ground with no keepers.
 You just have to drive from Glasgow to Campbeltown through hundreds of miles of sitka spruce and not one hare in sight. Or visit Creag Meagaidh, one of Scotland’s National Nature Reserves, and ask to be shown a mountain hare!!   *Please accept apologies for the block of text. There is an ongoing issue with the SGA website which we hope to rectify before the festive break as we port the existing content over to a new content management system.