Dear Mr Stumpkiller - you wrote 'The English called them "fowlers" 'cause that's all there was left to shoot on their little barren island. The deer were all wiped out before flintlocks were invented.'
You might be a moderator and may take pleasure in kicking me out as a result of what I write, but what you have written is sheer unadulterated and spiteful rubbish and verges on the style of Anglophobe cr*p I read about on other forums, but hardly expected to see on THIS forum.
For what it's worth...
1. The British use the term fowler to any larger-bore, that is to say, a 10 or 8 gauge shotgun, these days. We do not shoot with black powder muzzle-loaders, but certainly still shoot with BP cartridge guns and punt guns.
2. The UK is most cerainly NOT a little barren island. It's not the Amazonian rain forest, but barren it is not. I am surrounded by almost a 1/4 million acres of the best farmland anywhere in Europe, bar none. As a matter of fact, the principal industry of the UK IS agriculture, and we export a lot to many other countries, including yours. Ever eaten a Granny Smith apple? And how's this? 'British farmers care for more than 70% of the total land area of the UK and produce nearly 65% of the food we eat in this country'.
Barren? I think not, Sir.
3. Far from having had the deer wiped out, it has obviously sailed right over your biased head that between fifteen and twenty thousand or even more foreigners, including many Americans, come over to UK ever year for the sport of deer-stalking, not only in Scotland, but in the many parts of the rest of the British Isles where we have an over-abundance of deer of many species. In fact, the latest figures published by BASC show that we have an alamring surplus of around 310,000 deer this year that need a massive cull to reduce stocks. I draw your attention to this report, if you can be bothered to read it, that is -
"Plan to control deer population
Deer can cause road accidents and damage vegetation
Proposals to control UK wild deer numbers are being published by the government. Some experts believe that the deer population in England is at its highest level for a millennium.
At present, 160,000 deer are culled each year because they are damaging crops and woodland, and are involved in thousands of car accidents.
Peter Watson, from the Deer Initiative charity, said: "The real issue is to ensure that we don't start looking at deer purely as a pest."
He added: "We've got to treat them as an asset because if we don't we devalue their presence in the countryside."
Management future
The government's new strategy follows a public consultation by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Forestry Commission.
Defra is heralding the strategy as the first modern framework for tackling the management of wild deer.
The say that despite the role of the government, the primary responsibility for deer control will remain with landowners.
Minister Ben Bradshaw said: "Wild deer are beautiful animals and an important part of our cultural landscape and natural heritage.
"With careful and sustainable management, landowners and deer managers will be able to control the impact that the increasing numbers of wild deer are having on our native biodiversity, while conserving and protecting both the countryside and its wildlife, including native deer."
Does THAT look like a lack of deer to you? Having to cull 160,000 deer looks like a whole lot to me.
Let's have less of this unpleasantness when you look over the water at us here. Your snide remarks are not viewed with as much tolerance as you might have been led to think from our usually genteel way of doing things. The least you could have done was to do a little research before you went into print, don't you think?
tac
BASC
GCC
Countryside Commission of UK
British Federation of Rural Landowners
British Wildlife Trust and a number of others...
tac
Ready to go now.
