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Farming Today: Hind Stalking in Sutherland

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29/12/2015

Hind Stalking in Sutherland

BBC Radio 4 - Farming Today, Hind Stalking in Sutherland

Moira Hickey spends a day on a Highland estate where the annual hind cull is underway.

Winter is the hind-culling season in the Scottish Highlands. Moira Hickey spends a day with keepers as they set about their work on the Reay Forest estate in Sutherland.

David Allison is Head Stalker on the Duke of Westminster's Reay Forest estate in Sutherland, in the north west of Scotland, and the autumn and winter months - October to February - are the hind-stalking season. What David describes as 'grooming the herd' involves the culling of hinds - female red deer - to keep numbers stable. While some estates invite paying guests to involve themselves in the cull, this estate does not, leaving the work to the seven professional stalkers who, between them, aim to kill around 200 hinds this season.

The estate, covering 96,000 acres, maintains a deer population of around 3,300 deer - that's eight deer per square kilometre, which David says is a level that's good for the environment, for the deer and for the estate. Moira Hickey accompanies him as he sets out for a day's stalking, in which he aims to identify weak hinds and any late-born calves which he judges unlikely to survive the winter. His knowledge of the terrain and his assessment of the weather conditions soon lead them to a small group of deer, and the day ends with two carcasses on their way to the estate game larder, to be sold on as venison.

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