Earlier this week, I made my annual pilgrimage to the Cairngorms National Park to go deer stalking, an activity I was introduced to in the 1990s and quickly fell in love with. There are few better feelings than seeing a stag in your rifle’s telescopic sight, his antlers silhouetted against the skyline, having stalked the beast for several hours, much of it on your belly. It’s a challenging sport and not just because of the physical discomfort. Red deer can see, hear and smell you from thousands of yards away, so there’s no alternative but to sneak up on them downwind.
Some people will recoil at the thought of deriving pleasure from shooting such a majestic animal, but if they’re not killed by the ‘guests’, they’ll be shot by the professional stalkers employed by the estates or the park rangers. In 2020, the Deer Working Group, which was set up by the Scottish government, recommended that there should be a maximum of ten red deer per square kilometre over large areas of open range, and an estimated 200,000 are culled every year – more now that the SNP government has scrapped seasonal restrictions, making it possible to shoot stags all year round. Visitors like me account for a tiny fraction of the total, but it’s a storied tradition that has inspired some of Scotland’s finest paintings (see the Landseers in the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh) and provides employment to an army of stalkers and gillies, with the trade being passed down from one generation to the next. The large sporting estates are also responsible for a lot of Highland tourism, sustaining thousands of small businesses.
But stalking is under siege and is gradually dying out. The principal cause is the lucrative carbon credit market, making it more profitable for landowners to embark on large peatland regeneration schemes at the expense of traditional Scottish sports. It’s particularly profitable because this ‘rewilding’ is paid for by the Scottish taxpayer, with Holyrood having committed £250 million to restoring 250,000 hectares of peatland by 2030. The landowners happily fill in the drainage ditches that, 60 years ago, they were paid to dig in the hope of improving the grazing. They sell the carbon credits each year to businesses that want to offset their emissions, and watch their land rise in value thanks to the carbon gold rush.
According to the stalker that took me out on Monday – a 65-year-old who was the fifth generation of his family to take it up – a neighbouring estate was sold recently for £19.5 million, triple what it’s worth as measured by how many deer and grouse are shot by paying guests each year, which used to be the way sporting estates were valued. Since the purchase, grouse shooting has been stopped altogether and stalking is being phased out, with the new owners aiming to keep the number of deer down to two per square kilometre. It’s safe to say he was unimpressed.
‘There are no teachers in the schools, no nurses in the hospitals,’ he said, ‘but the Scottish government can find £25 million a year to fill in some ditches that will have little or no effect.’ As we passed various pools of water, he scoffed at the idea that the uplands would benefit from being even wetter: ‘At the end of today we’ll be absolutely bloody soaking.’
It’s hard to dismiss the suspicion that the real motive is a hatred of the sports associated with the landed gentry
One argument conservationists make is that peatland regeneration will reduce the risk of wildfires, but that is disputed by those who make their living on the land. You now need a licence to carry out a controlled burn and NatureScot is parsimonious about granting them, not wanting the carbon to be released into the atmosphere. In addition, the declining number of grouse shoots means fewer gamekeepers, so fires are less likely to be nipped in the bud. My stalker pointed out that the largest fire in the Cairngorms this year was on land that had been ‘rewilded’ by the RSPB.
Given how threadbare the evidence is that these regeneration schemes will have any impact on climate change, it’s hard to dismiss the suspicion that the real motive of the SNP is a hatred of the sports associated with the landed gentry. Instead of just banning them, which would be difficult given their importance to the rural economy, they’ve filled the landowners’ mouths with gold. Alas, most of the large estates are only too happy to embrace the carbon cash giveaway.
My visit to the Cairngorms was bittersweet. As we returned to the lodge in a Hilux with a dead stag in the back, my sense of wellbeing was tempered by the knowledge that this may be the last stalk I’ll ever do. Like so much of what makes Britain such a civilised place to live, this fine tradition won’t be with us much longer.
Comments