Too many wild deer are roaming England's forests. Can promoting venison to consumers help?

WINCHESTER, England -- In the half-light of dusk, Martin Edwards surveys the shadows of the ancient woodland from a high seat and waits. He sits still, watching with his thermal camera.

Even the hares don’t seem to notice the deer stalker until he takes aim. The bang of his rifle pierces the stillness. He’s killed a buck, one of many wild deer roaming this patch of forest in Hampshire, southern England.

Edwards advocates humane deer management: the culling of deer to control their numbers and ensure they don’t overrun forests and farmland in a country where they no longer have natural predators. For these advocates, shooting deer is much more than a sport. It’s a necessity because England's deer population has gotten out of control.

There are now more deer in England than at any other time in the last 1,000 years, according to the Forestry Commission, the government department looking after England’s public woodland.

That has had a devastating impact on the environment, officials say. Excessive deer foraging damages large areas of woodland including young trees, as well as the habitats of certain birds like robins. Some landowners have lost huge amounts of crops to deer, and overpopulation means that the mammals are more likely to suffer from starvation and disease.

“They will produce more young every year. We’ve got to a point where farmers and foresters are definitely seeing that impact,” said Edwards, pointing to some young hazel shrubs with half-eaten buds. “If there’s too many deer, you will see that they’ve literally eaten all the vegetation up to a certain height.”

Forestry experts and businesses argue that culling the deer — and supplying the meat to consumers — is a double win: It helps rebalance the ecosystem and provides a low-fat, sustainable protein.

While venison — a red meat similar to lean beef but with an earthier flavor — is often perceived as a high-end food in the U.K., one charity sees it as an ideal protein for those who can’t afford to buy other meats.

“Why not utilize that fantastic meat to feed people in need?” said SJ Hunt, chief executive of The Country Food Trust, which distributes meals made with wild venison to food banks.

An estimated 2 million deer now roam England’s forests.

The government says native wild deer play a role in healthy forest ecosystems, but acknowledges that their population needs managing. It provides some funding for solutions such as building deer fences.

But experts like Edwards, a spokesman for the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, believe lethal control is the only effective option, especially after deer populations surged during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The pandemic was a boon to deer because hunters, like everyone else, stayed home and the restaurant market — the main outlet for venison in the U.K. — vanished overnight.

“There were no sales of venison and the price was absolutely on the floor,” said Ben Rigby, a leading venison and game meats wholesaler. “The deer had a chance to breed massively.”

Rigby’s company now processes hundreds of deer a week, turning them into diced venison or steaks for restaurants and supermarkets. One challenge, he said, is growing the domestic appetite for venison so it appears on more dinner plates, especially after Brexit put new barriers up for exporting the meat.

“We’re not really a game-eating nation, not like in France or Germany or Scandinavia,” he said. “But the U.K. is becoming more and more aware of it and our trade is growing.”

Shooting deer is legal but strictly regulated in England. Stalkers must have a license, use certain kinds of firearms and observe open seasons. They also need a valid reason, such as when a landowner authorizes them to kill the deer when their land is damaged. Hunting deer with packs of dogs is illegal.

Making wild venison more widely available in supermarkets and beyond will motivate more stalkers to cull the deer and ensure the meat doesn’t go to waste, Edwards said.

Forestry England, which manages public forests, is part of that drive. In recent years it supplied some hospitals with 1,000 kg (1.1 tons) of wild venison, which became the basis of pies and casseroles popular with patients and staff, it said.

The approach appears to have been well received, though it has attracted some criticism from animal welfare group PETA, which advocates veganism.

Hunt, the food charity chief, said there’s potential to do much more with the meat, which she described as nutritious and “free-range to the purest form of that definition.”

Her charity distributed hundreds of thousands of pouches of venison Bolognese meals to food banks last year — and people are hungry for more, she said.

She recalled attending one food bank session where the only protein available was tinned sardines, tinned baked beans and the venison meals.

“There were no eggs. There was no cheese. That’s all that they could do, and people were just saying, ’Thank you, please bring more (of the venison),” she said. “That’s fantastic, because people realize they’re doing a double positive with helping the environment by utilizing the meat as well.”