Prince William goes 'deer culling' in Balmoral

[vera99]

What's wrong with these people? I can maybe understand the need for occasional culling (though it is most often for the human agency not a concern for the animal) but to go out and enjoy stalking these magnificent creatures get them in the sights of your guns and kill them - that's just sick.

PS. King Charles was a big fan of fox hunting

AIBU? - Yes this is actual nature conservation activity and William is showing concern and leadership in participating in the shooting.

YANBU? - No this is a sick perverted hobby of the super-rich who glory in the pleasure killing of defenceless animals.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11300807/Prince-Wales-visits-Balmoral-goes-deer-stalking-Scotland-trip-Queens-funeral.html

"Deer stalking is the act of culling ageing stags that would otherwise die in the winter, with William shooting his first when he was 14 years old, something that is said to have left him delighted at the time.
The activity, which has been a shared passion among generations of the Royal Family, was encouraged by William's father King Charles III, while Princess Diana used to jokingly call him 'my killer Wales'.
William is not thought to have been joined in Scotland by his wife Catherine, who is herself a keen markswoman, and their children. A spokesman for Kensington Palace declined to comment."

An ethical viewpoint

Precisely

That's lovely and those of us who happen to be living in rural Scotland will be doing what to protect our children and our pets from being mauled and eaten?

Look up Derek Gow, the Beaver Trust, the Lynx Conservation Trust - there’s so many people working to rebalance nature by reintroducing the right species to the right places. Sadly, breeding for shooting is a problem and raptors are being murdered for the sake of shooting. It’s a bad balance out there but there are loads of positive projects happening out there to try and fix the massive issues humans have caused.

OP you say this is because we’re royalists, we’re not necessarily , we’re conservationists.

That study contained a sample size of EIGHT birds btw. And I'm sure pregnant women and children can avoid pheasant if they really want too!

Trust me there is enough wine involved to be very sure that it is indeed… fun if you like seeing animals die in agony.

In Scotland (I am not familiar with English law in this sense), a landowner has a legal responsibility to manage the deer on his estate. William is merely carrying out his legal duty. Yes of course he could leave it to the gamekeepers, but I think it is a good thing that he has been trained in this (again a legal requirement to shoot deer) and goes out and takes part in a job that happens on his estate and see the process of killing deer in person. I think it is far preferable to know where your meat comes from and know how it is killed, than to buy a supermarket chicken that has lived in appalling conditions all its life.

Lynx wouldn’t eat your children or your pets.

wolves and bears won’t be reintroduced any time soon, if it happens, it’s decade and decades away. But Lynx, beaver, certain reptiles and amphibians and invertebrates, that’s happening right now and it’s amazing.

Named after the cleaning product by my widowed next-door neighbour under whos she lives. Her dead partner was called Brillo !

Couldn't have said it better myself

The deer levels are kept artificially high so it an be argued that it is indeed necessary - without question or challenge. It is a disgrace. All supported by William and the RF.

This. It should be done by the experts on the estate who will do it quickly and accurately. Doing it as a 'jolly' for the rich and entitled isn't a good look.

He did not take part because he has goals of becoming a game keeper . He took part for enjoyment and sport . Revolting behaviour on his part.

This is not true. It is not the same as pheasants and other shooting birds.

You are just making stuff up now to be inflammatory. It’s okay to not know what you’re talking about, it’s not okay to choose to be ignorant when those who work in this field are telling you the truth.

They’re unlikely to be the best people for the job as they spend most of their time doing other things.

They need to leave it to the professionals. It’s shouldn’t be something that William and his family/pals and others use for entertainment. Unfortunately though, it is.

And you know this as his gamekeeper ? As a person who has frequent conversation with him ?

'Today, let's celebrate the life of our grandmama, HM the Queen'
How will we do that Daddy?
'Let's kill something as magisterial as she was'
Yay! Get the guns.

@Plantstrees of course it's preferable to know where your meat comes from, but I still absolutely dispute the fact that he's doing it because he 'has to'. He's doing it because he wants to, because he enjoys it - and tbh, that's fine by me (also Scottish, also very much enjoys venison, completely clear-eyed about the fact that someone has to go and shoot it for me). But let's not pretend it's some sort of penance, there are plenty people to delegate the task to - including rich business men who would pay a few grand a day to do it for him.

No, we need to reintroduce the predators and let a natural balance establish itself. The UK is one of the most ecologically impoverished countries in Europe, and part of this is due to overgrazing and the catastrophic way we manage our uplands. Forests are habitats, and overgrazing by deer and sheep have destroyed them.

Rewding, and taking action to restore some of the ancient forests that covered the UK, is really what's needed. Deer need to significantly reduce, but through sustainable means.

www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2020/september/uk-has-led-the-world-in-destroying-the-natural-environment.html

rewildingbritain.org.uk/assets/uploads/Rewilding%20and%20Climate%20Breakdown%20-%20a%20report%20by%20Rewilding%20Britain.pdf

So here the collective conscience was salvaged by using the pheasants shot every weekend and someone came up with a brilliant idea of distributing them to the ‘poor’ and ‘needy’, Howe generous one might think. How giving.

Until the local doctors realised they were being eaten by poor pregnant whom were consuming large quantities of lead. These women had no idea. I would argue that people are inadvertently eating this stuff are putting themselves at risk,

It doesn’t come with a label or a warning ffs.

How

Of course this is preferable and potentially a possibility in Scotland but in England. The space, the woodland/forest cover isn’t enough and with god awful projects like HS2 going ahead our forests (especially ancient) grow smaller every day. There needs to be a major shift in our green spaces in Negland before we can consider serious reintroduction of apex predators because it wouldn’t work and we’d be tipping the balance incorrectly again.

Exactly. I live rurally, and would not be the slightest bit worried about being eaten by Lynx.

Not every opponent of current land management practices and the deer stalking industry lives in SE England, you know.

Areas like Kielder are in England - that's one of the proposed sites for reintroduction.

Apex predatorreintroduction and reforestation would obviously have to be a gradually managed process, taking many decades for a balance to be reached. But it is what's needed.

Well said!