Valley Venison is a small business, with a focus on connecting people back with nature and wild food, offering a healthier alternative to farmed and store bought meat, with bodily health and environmental health benefits in mind.
Valley Venison aims to produce high quality, sustainable and ethical wild venison, harvested in accordance with our strict, science based wildlife management plans. We understand that deer are an important part of the natural landscape, but with a lack of natural predators capable of controlling deer in the UK a need for professional deer management is needed. Through our management we are able to keep deer numbers at a level and sustainable figure, while providing locally sourced wild protein to our customers. This Blog entry aims to break down what we do, and why.
The welfare and longevity of the deer herd is our main priority, and so venison will only be available if the herd requires numbers to be lowered. We will never put money ahead of this core belief.
What is deer management and why is it necessary?
Deer management refers to any practice involved in controlling deer herds and their welfare. For us this entails a range of activities, including and not limited to the following:
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Monitoring and counting:
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Knowing the herd density and volume of animals is very important, we spend many hours and days counting, and double counting our properties, to see how many animals live on the property at any one time, and identifying their age, sex and health.
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Deer of different ages, sex and species will live differently and have different needs and behaviours, and so it is important we know what animals are where so that we can maintain a healthy number of deer on the properties.
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Monitoring is constantly on going, however we always recount to make sure we are over or under harvesting from an area
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Once we are confident of our numbers, we will set out a detailed cull plan, making sure to remove any unwell or injured animals from the herd.
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A large herd of animals can become unsustainable, and so it is important we keep numbers at a suitable level. This ensures the animals have enough food, shelter and room to live healthy lives. A herd which is too densely populated, will spread diseases, parasites and over eat their food supply, leading to unhealthy animals which will suffer and perish in times of hardship.
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Stalking and culling:
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Deer are "stalked" (hunted) during a legal season, this changes depending on the species and sex of the animal, but it is important we follow these seasons to ensure ethical harvest.
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Once a suitable animal is harvested, it is inspected for any abnormalities and ensured it is suitable for the food chain, it is tagged with its own unique identifying number, which is put onto the packaging of each piece of meat, and can be traced from the plate is it consumed on, to the property, time and date it is taken.
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Preparation of the meat:
Once an animal has been harvested, we no longer view it as an animal, but as food produce, and so it is important to be treated as such. The carcass is first inspected for any abnormalities, illness or injury, an extensive check is undertaken by a trained hunter, which ensures the animal had no illness or ailment that deems the meat unconsumable. The carcass is then chilled for a minimum of 48 hours and a maximum of 10 days, before being butchered, labelled, packed and frozen, ready for collection or delivery.
Utilising the whole animal:
It is important to us that we respect the life taken, and so we ensure as much of the animal is used as possible.
- All skins are used by a local crafts company.
- Antlers are sold for décor or crafts.
- Any non-humane grade meat is donated for dog food, along with bones, heart, liver, lung and kidneys.
- Any meat which is not sold is consumed by myself and my family, or donated.
- Any remaining by-products are returned to the environment where the animal was harvested, it is consumed and recycled by the foxes, badgers and other scavengers, redistributing its nutrients into the food chain.
Why we do what we do.
Wildlife and the natural world around me have always been my passion, at the age of 14 I found a cast antler not far from my fathers home in the Hope Valley (deer naturally grow a new set of antlers every year, and drop them in the spring). This began my obsession with deer.
Having grown up in the Peak District national park, I was fortunate enough to have Red deer (the UK's largest land mammal) right on my doorstep. I became fascinated with their behaviour and ecology. Their annual mating season known as the rut which takes place in October was my favourite time of year, when stag roars echo through the woodland and high on the moorland tops.
Having followed my passion through my teenage years, I pursued it ton University, graduating with a bachelors degree in Wildlife Biology. Armed with this, I became increasingly aware of the herds growing numbers, and began to notice the damage the uncontrolled deer herd was doing. Woodlands with little to no regeneration, lack of undergrowth, ground nesting bird habitat completely destroyed, the list goes on.
By the age of 21, deer became my life, and livelihood, armed with a degree and enthusiasm, I emigrated to New Zealand, working in the deer farming industry, as well as the guided hunting industry and wild animal cull operations for international sales.
Having set up business in New Zealand I am now in a position where I can spend half my year back home in the Hope Valley, pursuing my passion to professionally and passionately manage the wild deer which I hold so close to my heart.
Through operating on a number of farms and woodlands I am able to ensure these magnificent animals have a place in the countryside, turning the opinions of farmers who view these animals as a pest which cause only economic loss, to viewing them as a resource which can be steadily managed and have a sustainable economic gain, living alongside each-other, rather than against one another.