The blast of gunshot that breaks through the still winter morning is so startling that it takes me a moment to register that it has come from me. In my hands is a 6.5-calibre Blaser rifle and lying in front of me is the carcass of a deer.
How I, a squeamish nature lover who has never killed anything bigger than a spider, have ended up with Bambi’s blood on my hands is a story of greed, guilt and a quest to find a sustainable way to eat meat.
Red meat, we are increasingly told, is bad for our health and the planet, but the one meat we’re being encouraged to eat more of is venison. There are about two million deer roaming the countryside, the highest in a millennium. Most of us are sentimental about them, but the reality is that deer destroy woodland and farmers’ crops, and do £45 million worth of damage to cars every year. Defra, which is due to publish a national deer management strategy this year, acknowledges that “lethal control” is the best solution and has emphasised the need to boost the market for UK venison.
The British Association for Shooting and Conservation has begun a campaign to encourage people to eat more game, pointing out that venison results in almost 30 times less carbon emissions than beef per kilogram. Last week Tops nurseries in Dorset and Hampshire announced that they would serve wild-shot venison to their 4,000 children as part of a partnership with Eat Wild, the development board for British game.
Deer stalking, therefore — traditionally the domain of royals, aristocrats and ruddy-faced gentlemen — has been given an environmentally friendly makeover. At least that is the case I try to make to my adolescent nieces and nephews as they wail: “You’re going to shoot Bambi!”
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I meet Peter Jones, a former Metropolitan Police officer who has set up a company, County Deer Stalking, in a wet and windy forest near Basingstoke. He says my family’s response is not unusual. There is such a stigma about deer stalking that many of his clients keep it a secret. It is historically known as a rich man’s sport, but Jones says most of the people who contact him are city dwellers and are not motivated by bloodlust, but by a desire to eat meat in an ethical way.
Hampshire is not the obvious location for my debut but Jones has permission to “manage” deer on a number of farms and estates near the village of Ramsdell. We run through the mechanics of shooting a gun and the anatomy of a deer; the aim is to hit the animal above the front leg in the region of the heart and lungs for a quick death. Then we’re on to target practice. I’m surprised by the force of the gun and the distance from which I’m shooting; around 90m from the target. It’s not a reassuring combination.
Jones explains that bullets can travel for three miles, which is why you never shoot an animal that’s moving and never fire unless there is a backstop of some variety to stop the bullet if you miss. I begin to fear for the local population.
Having set off, I quickly realise that stalking is nothing like I imagined. The sport has long been associated with nobility. Its fans, which include the King and his late mother, will often talk about the primal appeal of the hunt and the spiritual union with the stag. It brings to mind strange traditions like blooding — an initiation in which shooters have the animal’s blood smeared on their face after their first kill. I had imagined that it would be loud and bombastic, a social event as much as a sport, such as shooting grouse or pheasant. But it transpires that stalking is quite solitary, involving long periods of silence. In that way it feels more like fishing, which I enjoy. The difference in this case is that I’m killing a mammal and I have no idea how that will feel.
The first problem, however, is visibility; we are surrounded by trees and after about an hour of creeping around in shrubbery, it is starting to feel like a long and unsatisfactory game of hide and seek. Jones peers through a pair of heat-detecting binoculars while I follow on tiptoe, trying not to laugh.
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We eventually spot a couple of roe deer, but only after they have spotted us and fled in the opposite direction. Two muntjacs, meanwhile, are scared away by dog walkers. We finally spot a sedentary deer sheltering behind a hedge. Slowly, quietly, we make our way towards it, approaching from the other side of the hedge. I line up the rifle and am ready to pull the trigger when Jones puts his hand up signalling me to stop.
There are rules about when certain deer species can be shot. This is a male roe deer and we are in antler-dropping season; without antlers it is impossible to accurately estimate its age and therefore unethical to shoot it. People imagine that stalking is all about trophies, Jones says, but responsible deer management is different. Deer have no natural predatorin this country so the aim is to recreate the impact of a predator by selecting the animals they would: primarily yearlings and the very old. Females are mostly verboten during the spring and summer when they are with their young. Only muntjac, one of the fastest-growing species and the one with least commercial value, can be shot all year round.
Between 500,000 and 750,000 wild deer need to be culled each year to keep the population at a standstill but presently the number killed annually is about 350,000. Conservationists favour an overall population of under a million deer to reduce their economic and ecological impact. One reason the number of deer killed remains low is because of the value of the meat. In the supermarket beef and venison cost about the same amount, between £10 and £12 for a 300g steak. With venison however, the processing has to be done in a specially approved game-handling establishment that accounts for most of the cost, with only a small amount going to the hunter.
By now the light is fading, so we agree to reconvene in a few weeks’ time. The day in question is icy and we meet early in the morning, once more trudging through the fields for an hour or so without success. Back in the high seat I take out my phone and surreptitiously make a start on my supermarket order.
Then, on the way back to the van, I spot something moving ahead: a young roe deer a couple of hundred yards away. We creep towards it, weaving in and out of trees, but there are branches obstructing my view and I am concerned that there isn’t a backstop. We stay absolutely still and wait. After about ten minutes the deer steps out into the sunshine of the open field. It’s too far away for me to see in any detail with the naked eye, but I can clearly see it through the telescopic lens; it’s the perfect shot. I squeeze the trigger, hear the boom but can’t, for a moment, make out whether I’ve hit it.
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Jones peers through binoculars. “It’s down,” he says. It later transpires that I shot it through the heart; the animal would have died before it hit the ground. Jones congratulates me on my first kill and I’m acutely aware that I’m supposed to feel something. I had wondered if there might be a rush of adrenaline, something primal buried deep in my DNA. Instead I’m curiously ambivalent; sad to have killed something quite lovely, relieved I didn’t cause it more pain. Perhaps my ancestors were vegan?
I have no appetite for the next part. Jones drags the deer into the woods to deal with the blood and guts and returns to the van 20 minutes later pulling the carcass in a toboggan. Clients who want to can learn how to prepare the meat there and then, but I take the cowardly route and have it sent to a butcher. Two days later it arrives in neatly packed plastic parcels.
Venison has an abundance of health benefits; it’s high in protein and very low in fat. We decide to start with the fillet. It’s chunkier than a similar cut of beef so my partner and I pan-fry it with oil and rosemary and put it in the oven for 20 minutes. Jones has warned that it will not taste like the venison I’ve eaten before; butchers tend to hang the meat for longer to increase the flavour of game. He is right — my deer has a more delicate flavour, more akin to beef but with an earthier undertone.
My partner thinks it’s delicious. But I don’t enjoy it nearly as much. Several weeks on I am still avoiding the remaining cuts in my freezer. In fact, I’m less inclined to eat meat altogether. There is no rational reason for this. I’m usually happy to be a carnivore and have travelled the Highlands fuelled by game casserole. I know what commercial farming involves and realise that the animal I shot had a quick and painless death. But denial turns out to have had a powerful effect on my appetite; now that I’ve killed an animal, I no longer have quite the same taste for eating meat.
