Chamber and committees

I am sure there will be a chance to get back at you, minister.

Mark Ruskell has some questions about buses.

Thank you, Mark.

I have questions on islands, which also fall within your portfolio. The Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill has been published. I suspect that if it is implemented as it stands it will produce some challenges for islands in terms of how they cope with its requirements. How did you feed into that process and what do you see as being the key challenges?

Actually, minister, I hate to say that you are wrong, but you are wrong. The reason for close deer seasons was not to allow for antler growth—that is fundamentally untrue. The reason for close seasons is that the deer were in very poor shape, in most cases, after they had completed the rut—certainly the red deer were. By harrying them all year round, you are increasing the pressures on them.

As a deer manager, I can give you an example. I picked up 60 young stags that were dead on the edge of a plantation after a very cold and wet spring—and that was without their being harried and being given a fair chance to recover after the rut. What you are going to do will increase that sort of occurrence. If you are basing this legislation on the idea that it is all about growing antlers, I am afraid that that is wrong.

Minister, are you happy that, when a deer is at its weakest, most challenged point, before it goes into the most challenging season of the year—winter in Scotland—you are going to be harrying it and shooting it at every possible opportunity?

I am happy to ask no further questions and to allow the committee to continue. I will take my time up during the time when I—

Thank you, convener. I remind members of my entry in the register of members’ interests. I have a land farming partnership and there are deer on the land.

For the committee’s information, I have more than 40 years of deer management experience. When I was professionally managing land, I managed more than 200,000 acres across upland Scotland, often for private landowners, as well as some for crofters and some for farmers. I was trying to tot it up the other day, and I believe that I have probably authorised the cull of in excess of 20,000 red deer. That is not an insignificant number. I have been involved with six deer management groups. I helped to write their deer management plans, which extended from Tongue down to Dalnacardoch, so the number of red deer that I have been party to authorising the cull of is probably closer to 100,000. That is a lot of deer. I think that I have a good understanding of deer, and I think I have a really good understanding of the need to control deer. I would like to say at the outset that I accept that deer numbers in Scotland need to be dealt with and reduced.

I will start with a few simple facts. I believe that deer management is seriously complex. You are looking not just at male numbers but at female numbers and the percentage in calf each year. There are a whole heap of things to take into account before you get into the issue of the environment and whether it can sustain the deer. I have done transects on hills across a lot of Scotland to work out whether the environment is being damaged.

However, suppressing deer numbers is not—I repeat, not—about culling male deer; it is about culling breeding female deer. Stags are just about to start rutting, if they are not rutting already, and those of you who go to the hills at the moment will see the stags holding 30-plus females. Those of you who were out in the hills in August will have seen roe bucks charging around, chasing numerous does. It is a funny thing in life, when it comes to deer management and deer as a whole, that it is not about the number of males that are required; it comes down purely to the number of females. You can think that you have no males on the ground and, come the rut, the females will find them and move to them if they cannot find them on the ground. Thus, to my mind, targeting males as a specific element of the population is futile and misplaced.

Therefore, my question is: do we need this? Let us look back at the Deer (Scotland) Act 1996, which allows for the control of deer out of season by regulation, as we have heard this morning. There are grounds for granting consent for the control of deer out of season: preventing damage to agricultural land, timber and the natural environment, and public safety. Therefore, you can get an authorisation, and much has been made of that this morning. I am thankful that that provision exists. However, what has not been made clear to the committee this morning is that there is a general authorisation that is issued all year round by NatureScot, which allows for the control of deer on improved agricultural land and enclosed woodland. You do not have to apply for anything to do that; you can do it automatically, because the general licence exists.

The only thing that that general authorisation does not allow is the killing of female deer that are over a year old. The reason for that is that they could well be pregnant at that stage, and a general authorisation would allow them to be killed in the latter stages of a pregnancy, which I think we all agree would be unacceptable. Therefore, that provision exists—we have that authorisation. There is no paperwork to complete or forms to fill in. You can get on with it, because the law says that it can be done.

Therefore, what will this legislation mean? I can tell you absolutely—I know that the matter has been discussed—that male deer will, in effect, become targets from the day that they are born to the day that they die. I have to say that by reducing the male deer population you are not going to decrease the overall deer population across Scotland—as, I think, the minister has accepted. I mentioned earlier the fact that male deer, when they have mated, are run. In many cases, they are in very poor condition. That is particularly the case for hill deer. By harrying them as they go into the winter, you will increase mortality. You absolutely will increase mortality if you are chasing those male deer before they have had a chance to recover from the rut.

Then the question is what you do with the carcases. The minister has said that the deer industry is quite keen on having a shoulder of deer over the close seasons, when deer are not being shot. However, there is a very small close period, and you do not need it in the sense that, once the stags come out of season, the hinds come into season, and once the bucks come out of season, the does come into season—there is that continuity. Therefore, you will be left with the question of what to do with the run animals, which is what they are called. If you have ever been on the hill, you will know that can smell them from a distance. The stags stink, they are thin and scrawny and they are not fit to eat. Most game dealers will not accept them into their larders, because no one wants to eat them. Indeed, I would not eat them, and, to my mind, they are not fit for human consumption.

A point was made today—I think by Hugh Dignon—about shooting stags out of season, and I remind the committee of the not insignificant number of stags that were left on the hill at Knoydart to rot—86 of them—which is not acceptable. That is what will happen if we allow this regulation to pass.

During this process, I have been disappointed because I cannot find out who the minister consulted. The minister has alluded to the people the consultation was open to, and in a meeting on, I think, 28 June, she discussed this and said that she had Forestry and Land Scotland, NatureScot and the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission—which does not, as I have said, have a single deer management practitioner on its board. Minister, I do not think that you even got support at that meeting from all the groups that were represented. Perhaps you can clarify that. What is abundantly clear is that deer managers—deer practitioners on the ground—were not in favour of this measure and do not support it. Perhaps in answer to that, at the end of this meeting, the minister will be in a position to clarify who actually voted in favour of the legislation and who voted against it.

We have heard today about who will use the regulation, and we have heard that people who manage deer will be unlikely to use it. I hasten to mention “people who manage deer”, because we have also heard that those who are likely to use the regulation, and who have said to me openly that they will support it, are Forestry and Land Scotland, RSPB Scotland and some landowning charities. I ask the committee to remember this: those people do not manage deer; they are not deer managers. They are land managers, and they control deer to allow their other activities to take place. I do not criticise them for that, but those are two very different objectives.

When I started the campaign and petition to overturn this—which I will talk about in a minute—I was stopped while driving down the road around Inverness by a Forestry and Land Scotland ranger, who said to me, “Thank you, Edward, for doing this. I’m disgusted by the job that I’m having to do. I’m having to kill more than two deer every day that I work. I’m told it doesn’t matter what age they are or what sex they are—whether they’re calves or females. I am told that if they are in timber, I am to destroy them.” He was disgusted. He said to me that that was not management; it was eradication.

I find that difficult, including from a welfare point of view, which I will come on to next. What the Government is suggesting by this legislation is that there will be no rest—no respite—so you can shoot male deer all year round. You can shoot them with lighter ammunition, and you can shoot them all night. It means that you are shooting them 24 hours a day, seven days a week—because there is no stopping you on a Sunday—365 days of the year. That does not sound like management to me. It sounds like something that I used to do when I was in the army, which was called warfare.

Now, the minister will deploy the argument that there are great technological advances, such as the use of suppressors, which do not frighten the deer so much. Well, people get confused about what a suppressor does on a rifle. Yes, it muffles the noise, but if you are on the receiving end of the bullet, let me tell you that you still hear the crack, you still hear the thump and you will still run away, and that will be the case with deer.

In this process, there is no respite. As you can see when you go into woodlands, as I have done with rangers, as soon as deer see a vehicle, they are gone. As soon as they see a light at night, they are gone. That, to my mind, is not where we want to be.

I would also argue that shooting young male calves when females are in milk, especially on the hill in woodlands, is not good practice. Deer get mastitis, and it is deeply unpleasant when they do.

The fact that you are doing this with males means that you have no selection. People who manage deer take a great deal of effort to ensure that they cull deer so that males do not mate with their mothers and sisters—that is bad deer management. If you are just indiscriminately killing males, you end up with juveniles that are probably more difficult to identify and that might end up mating with their sisters and mothers. That will cause all sorts of problems and make the herd poorer.

In answer to the question about Forestry and Land Scotland, I would say that if you were to look objectively at the organisation’s larder records and see who was culling deer out of season and then ask how many of the deer that Forestry and Land Scotland shoots in its woodlands are under 12 months old, you would be shocked. Very young animals, including calves, are shot. In fact, when mothers are shot, calves are automatically shot, too, and they can be just months old when that happens.

I do not believe that there are welfare grounds for doing this, and I do not think that it is necessary. This is the dichotomy for me, and it goes back to a point raised by Kate Forbes. When I sat on this committee, I heard about the need to control rabbits and look after their welfare. I agree with that, but never forget that rabbits eat trees just as much as deer do. I have also sat in this Parliament and heard about why we need to protect blue hares. There might be an argument for that—localised, I would say—but the fact is that hares, not deer, are one of the biggest destroyers of young trees. In cold weather, they have an ability to strip bark off young trees, which prevents their growth.

I have also sat here, in this Parliament, and heard about the need to protect seals. At the time, that was in relation to salmon. However, that is despite an explosion in the seal population, which is something that we are not addressing. I have also heard about how we are going to protect beavers. In the previous session of Parliament, we heard about how we were not going to allow them to be moved around Scotland. Now, under the current Government, we are, and they are going to be given virtually total protection. We have also heard in this Parliament about why we should ban the use of glue traps to control rodents.

Can we see a common thread here with regard to small, fluffy animals—hares, rabbits, seals? Why do deer not fit into that? Why are deer not being afforded the same protection as these other animals?

When I heard that this instrument was coming forward, I started an online petition. I did not advertise it; I put it on Facebook as well as on Twitter, with a few tweets. I got support from Scottish Land & Estates, the Scottish Gamekeepers Association, BASC, the Scottish Countryside Alliance and just about every other land manager in Scotland—all with little or no effort. As of today, 1,640 people have signed up to say that this must not happen. Some of the comments are unhelpful, but some are quite telling about their belief that this will not help deer management.

In summary, I have lodged this motion to annul because I do not believe that we need this instrument. It is misguided. The Government already has the ability to control deer in woodlands and on agricultural land without the authorisation to kill male deer.

I do understand the difficulties that might be placed on the Government by people who consider that this motion to annul would put them in a certain situation. I say to committee members that I absolutely accept that annulling the instrument today will not be the end of it, and I absolutely accept that the minister might wish to bring it back to the committee in a slightly bigger form. However, annulment would allow her to carry out the consultation that I believe that she has singularly failed to carry out, and it would allow her to understand some of the nuances of deer management. It is not about horn growth or, indeed, shooting deer in the rut, which we do anyway. Agreeing to the motion to annul would give the committee, which I believe is singularly important in the parliamentary process, the ability to scrutinise the Government when committee members have heard more evidence from deer practitioners.

I make no bones about the fact that I would rather that the changes did not happen, but I accept that they might happen. However, I want to ensure the primacy of the Parliament and this committee in the parliamentary process, and that the committee is heard. That is why I have lodged the motion to annul.

I am happy to take any questions that you allow, convener, on any part of what I have said.

I move,

That the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee recommends that the Deer (Close Seasons) (Scotland) Amendment Order 2023 be annulled.

Convener, can I briefly answer one of the points that has been raised, or do you want me to do that at the end?

I would love to have a long discussion about ballistics with the minister. Muzzle velocity is one thing, but it is nothing to do with delivering a certain number of kilojoules of energy directly at the point of aim. The problem with lighter copper bullets is that, unless you hit a bone, there will be deflection. There is no doubt that, if you hit an animal slightly further forward on the shoulder blade, the bullet can travel over the shoulder blade and out the other side. If you hit it too far back, in the guts, it might pass directly through the animal because there is no expansion.

Using copper bullets is fine during the day, because you can aim specifically for a bone at the top of the leg and, one would hope, hit it. Are you confident that that can be achieved with thermal imaging, infrared illuminators and IR sights? I am a practitioner with 40 years’ experience, and I am not sure that I would be able to do it, and I have used some very good thermal imaging sights.

They were probably done during daylight, which is the equivalent of using a lamp at night. It works fine in those circumstances. Has it been explained how difficult it is to achieve that with a TI sight, an II and an IR sight?

I am sure that the committee has heard enough from me today, so I will keep my comments brief.

I have to respond to Ariane Burgess’s comment about the administrative burden. Let me be absolutely clear that the general authorisation for the culling of deer, which was issued by NatureScot in 2023-24, allows occupiers who are suffering from damage to improved agricultural land and enclosed woodland to control the deer in the close season. No further paperwork is required. That was signed off by NatureScot. There is no administrative burden and occupiers have that right. They do not have the right to kill female deer that are more than one year old or those that have dependent calves or that are pregnant. There is, therefore, no administrative burden.

I stress that the welfare of deer is extremely important. I cannot emphasise enough that, if we are going to control wild animals, we have a responsibility to do so as humanely as possible, and that does not mean chasing them all day and all night.

I remain concerned about the consultation that the Government has carried out. I lodged the motion to annul to give the minister a chance to carry that out and see whether there is a way that those who would like to see more control of male deer during the close season and those who do not can find a way to work together. I remain concerned about the Government’s consultation.

I propose the motion to annul because it would give the minister a chance to carry out a consultation and see whether there is a way that those who would like there be more control of deer, and of male deer during the close season, and those who would not can work together. With the legislation, there will be those who want more control and those who do not, and there will be a split between people who manage land. When we are trying to control deer, that is deeply unhelpful.

I press the motion.