Deer are destroying Scotland's ecosystem

The state should force big reductions in numbers - and bring the venison to our tables

Hind on Maol Cheann-Dearg (bald red head), photo Rob Bruce

Venison is cheaper than beef or lamb and makes a brilliant festive winter stew. I like to add mushrooms, red peppers, a couple of ground juniper berries, a slug of red wine — and once, in an experimental mood, a can of French onion soup. I sometimes add oat groats: they soak up extra liquid, make the meat go further and add fibre.

While cooking, I have been pondering this question. If venison is plentiful, nutritious and relatively affordable, why are deer numbers in Scotland so out of control, and why are we tolerating a system that produces both animal suffering and public danger?

Estimates say the population could be as high as one million. It has doubled since 1990. With no large predators, deer are regulated mainly by what humans do (or don’t do). Their overpopulation brings starvation and disease.

This is a terrible situation for both people and animals - and we didn’t get here by accident. It’s the result of deliberate choices about who Scotland’s land is for, and a system of private ownership so concentrated that vast landscapes can be run primarily for the enjoyment of a few.

Starving deer cause car crashes

As winter wears on, emaciated, desperate deer seeking food and shelter pour down from the barren slopes they have stripped bare, searching for some entry point into crofts and gardens.

Driving at night in the Highlands, they are a major hazard. Without warning, they loom out of the dark and plunge into the headlights. Collisions run into the thousands each year, causing serious injuries and wrecking lives. Fatal crashes are rare - but they do happen.

Deer collapse and die at the fence line

By early spring, hunger has sapped their reserves. They use up body fat, then marrow fat. At the end of a long winter, some collapse and die - usually within sight of food they can smell but can’t reach.

This is because one of Scotland’s main responses has been not to bring deer numbers down, but to wall deer out.

Enormous fences march across our landscape: expensive, intrusive, and a permanent admission of failure. They’re a sticking plaster for a population problem.

Walk up many Scottish hills and you can see it. Before you reach the fence, the woodland is richer and multi-layered — regeneration, scrub, ground cover, birds. On the other side: almost nothing. The loss cascades through the ecosystem and makes the hills worse for people and wildlife - blocked routes, degraded ground, and pressure on iconic species that need complex woodland, including capercaillie.

Much of Scotland is still a playground for the rich

Almost 15% of Scotland is managed for deer shooting and another 13% is managed for grouse, according to the book “Scotland: A Rewilding Journey”. That is one quarter of Scotland’s land. Much of the rest is also home to wandering deer herds.

Shooting estates aren’t selling venison; they’re selling the experience of stalking. Stags are the product. People pay big money to be part of a shooting party, and they don’t come for empty hills. The business model rewards resisting pressure to cull.

We suffer a sort of environmental amnesia - we think the landscape we are used to is natural - but it is not. The sporting estate is a manufactured environment: managed to privilege deer and grouse over woodland, people, and biodiversity.

Here is Anthony Trollope describing the establishment of a shooting estate in his 1880 novel “The Duke’s Children”.

“The shooting was in the west of Perthshire, known as Crummie-Toddie, and comprised an enormous acreage of so-called forest and moor. Mr. Dobbes declared that nothing like it had as yet been produced in Scotland. Everything had been made to give way to deer and grouse. The thing had been managed so well that the tourist nuisance had been considerably abated. There was hardly a potato patch left in the district, nor a head of cattle to be seen. There were no inhabitants remaining, or so few that they could be absorbed in game-preserving or cognate duties. Reginald Dobbes, who was very great at grouse, and supposed to be capable of outwitting a deer more perfectly than any other sportsman in Great Britain, regarded Crummie-Toddie as the nearest thing there was to a Paradise on earth. Could he have been allowed to pass one or two special laws for his own protection, there might still have been improvement. He would like the right to have all intruders thrashed by the gillies within an inch of their lives; and he would have had a clause in his lease against the making of any new roads, opening of footpaths, or building of bridges.

Other kinds of private estate are often no better. Proper deer management costs money. A full-time stalker isn’t just a wage: it’s national insurance, accommodation, vehicles, equipment, carcass handling, and compliance. Venison sales don’t cover the fully-loaded cost. So why would the owners bother? There is no carrot and there is basically no stick, so they often do nothing.

This is a big problem and it is going to take more than an extra person on the staff here and there. How many deer is one person realistically going to shoot in a season? Unless you give them a machine gun, it is going to be dozens rather than hundreds.

But Scottish Government action is feeble

A new Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill going through Holyrood is meant to strengthen deer regulation and make it easier to compel effective control when voluntary action fails.

But after years of consultation and the intensifying animal suffering and human risk the tweaks feel feeble.

And what makes that timidity even more frustrating is that these powers largely already existed.

NatureScot has had intervention powers under the Deer (Scotland) Act 1996 for decades. Yet compulsory action has been treated as almost unthinkable - and only in April 2025 did the Scottish Government approve the first ever Section 8 compulsory control scheme, at Loch Choire Estate in Sutherland.

Meanwhile deer-vehicle collisions run into the many thousands a year and rising, leading to injury and sometimes death of people just going about their business.

Winter starvation of animals is an annual, foreseeable issue. It is inhumane - the deer that ended up in my stew is arguably one of the lucky ones.

Doing something meaningful is going to require bold leadership and strong action by government. But it is not impossible - and there is an upside. More venison

(Next week in part 2 I will dig into the history of how the Highlands were remade into a deer-predated wasteland. )

Buying diced venison at Anderson’s in Leith