The PM's Back

You have to feel for our Prime Minister. He would dearly love to go deer stalking but he has a 'phenomenally bad back'. He is therefore not fit enough to go crawling through heather.

He dismissed claims that the sport was not quite what he should be involved in anyway.

He suggested that deer stalking is the most "defensible" of field sports because it helps keep the population under control.

The fact is actually quite the reverse, as has been pointed out elsewhere. It is the deer stalking industry that keeps large numbers of red deer on Scottish hills in order to provide beasts for the kill. That in turn creates an ecological impact on the hills where trees are rarely seen. There the deer do a similar job to sheep in the Peak District. Once again the main culprits are the managers.

Fortunately on Blacka the wild unexploited and unmanaged deer are free to wander at will. Anyone can come here in the hope of seeing deer amid a much more natural scenery than the bare hills. The threat here remains from sheep and cattle. And I've not often had to crawl to get my photos.