'She's happy to have blood on the hillsides, but not on her hands': Gamekeepers ... trends now

Heading out for a day in the hills, Falcon Frost pulls on heavy boots and slings a rifle onto his back. He is surrounded by the towering beauty of the Glenfalloch estate in the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, north of Glasgow.

For ‘townies’, this is a magical place to escape the rat race and bag the six Munros – peaks above 3,000ft – including the queen of the Southern Highlands, Ben Lui, which lies within its 25,000 acres.

For Mr Frost, a stalker and estate manager, this is also his place of work. Deer are culled on estates such as Glenfalloch and, for much of the past 28 years, it has been Mr Frost’s job to ensure that it is carried out.

Lately, though, he and others who earn their living in the countryside are starting to feel it is they who have a target on their backs.

‘There’s very little trust left and that’s the problem. We seem to be getting it from all angles,’ he said. ‘Some folk do feel this is an attack on our traditional way of life.’

He is referring to a recent Scottish Government consultation on the most radical changes to deer management in living memory.

It contains proposals that would rip up the previously collaborative approach to deer management and, instead, demand reductions in deer numbers. Failure by gamekeepers to carry out culls, ordered by regulator NatureScot, could lead to a fine of £40,000 and a jail term of up to three months – or both.

NatureScot could also bill an estate owner if a third party has to do the cull.

Deer managers have reacted with undisguised fury to the idea of these Deer Management Nature Restoration Orders (DMNROs), branding them a ‘draconian measure’ which blows the principle of voluntary deer management ‘clean out of the water’.

Opponents have threatened to take legal action to halt them if necessary, arguing they could effectively let NatureScot go onto a private estate and impose a cull based on a purely subjective and scientifically undefined need for ‘nature restoration and enhancement’.

The Scottish Gamekeepers Association left the consultation entirely after claiming the orders could force members to take part in the culling and disembowelling of heavily pregnant hind deer due to proposed changes to the female deer season.

It warned it could damage members’ mental health and contravene their human rights and, to push home their point, it recently posted distressing images on social media of an almost full-term foetus that was recovered from its freshly shot mother.

T O seasoned observers such as Mr Frost, 48, this increasingly bitter standoff is symptomatic of concerted efforts by an urban-centric government to wrest control of the countryside from those who live and work there. And it’s all being done under the flag of environmentalism.

‘You certainly hear through the grapevine that there are some very disgruntled people in the countryside – that this is the thin end of the wedge,’ he said. ‘Deer management for the last ten years or so has gone through these different reviews and there is a sense of the Government constantly shifting the goalposts. They can’t seem to decide what they want.

‘I don’t think they totally get how the countryside works.’

He added: ‘Where intervention is justified, I am totally for it.

‘But a lot of the sector feels this is a step too far. It’s creating unnecessary tension.’

That tension has been bubbling under for some years between shooting estates and agencies and charities focused on rewilding upland areas.

It has reached a point where conflict mediators, more used to working in Northern Ireland and the Middle East, have been brought in to try to make peace between stalkers, environmentalists and science/policy experts.

Father-of-three Mr Frost, a second-generation stalker who has been part of that forum, said it had been working towards common goals through dialogue but warned: ‘DMNROs could undo a lot of that good work.’ He added: ‘We had a visit from biodiversity minister Lorna Slater at Glenfalloch and we offered to take her out on the hill for a day and show her what deer management involves. But she hasn’t taken us up on that, unfortunately.’

The Greens minister, who is leading the consultation, has also twice rejected an invitation by Tory MSP and landowner Edward Mountain to a deer stalking ‘fact-finding’ event despite her strong advocacy of the culls.

Mr Mountain, MSP for Highlands and Islands, had urged Ms Slater to take the opportunity to meet those with a ‘deep knowledge of the subject’ and to ‘actively participate in a culling operation’. But Ms Slater replied that she already had a ‘full understanding’ of deer management.

Mr Mountain, who is convener of Holyrood’s net zero, energy and transport committee, said: ‘It seems Lorna Slater is happy for there to be blood on the hillsides but not on her hands.

‘I invited her to spend the day in the countryside with me and some deer stalkers for two main reasons. Firstly, so she could see and hear for herself first hand some of these very genuine concerns, but also to correct some of the arguments she and her government have put forward that are not accurate.

‘It’s regrettable that she has declined this invitation twice, and perhaps it tells you everything you need to know about this Scottish Government. It’s always beneficial for Edinburgh-based ministers to get out of their comfort zone and see what rural Scotland is actually

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