Each year, SGA members in urban areas, who manage deer, gift some of the local venison to community causes including food banks and nature reserves.
The management of the deer itself benefits green spaces by reducing browsing impacts and it lessens pressure on the busy roads network; with deer vehicle collisions a hazard in these areas.
Peri-urban roe deer near
Glasgow
The SGA has long supported members in the central belt, seeking Government support for provision of lardering facilities which could lead to more deer management, healthier habitats and more local people and causes benefitting, see:
This is a story about the gifting of local venison (one of Scotland’s healthiest, sustainable meats) to the GalGael working community in Govan for their AGM this year.
It was written for the SGA by a founding GalGael Trustee, Alastair MacIntosh.
“Fifty years ago I was an apprentice pony boy to the head keeper, the late Tommy Macrae of Eishken Estate, Isle of Lewis. I learned to respect the humane and necessary culling ethos that a well trained and well grounded stalker carries as their craft. Indeed, Tommy’s son, Christopher, who follows in his father’s footsteps is a well kent face in the SGA. In 2022, he was awarded a Long Service medal (see image, below).
The GalGael is best known for building wooden boats, using them to reconnect urban dwellers with coastal communities. We’re deeply aware that those from hard-pressed parts of town need a connection with food production and nature for their wellbeing. Time spent out on the water or the hill can restore hope, meaning and, even, save lives.
The SGA put me in touch with Davie Quarrell, who is licensed to manage deer near the M8 at Easterhouse to help protect gardens, trees and prevent accidents. He said he’d sort us out with a buck roe deer for our forthcoming AGM.
I received a text later, from a GalGael colleague, after we had prepared the deer: “To engage with a gift like this within the urban context, with a community, is quite extraordinary. It brings something very ancient back to the people – a symbolic, meaningful and virtually lost ritual.”
That animal made into a giant stew would feed fifty to a hundred people. As one of our founders, whose wife is a school dinner lady, put it, “A sane society would make it easier to feed the bairns on this quality of stuff.”
* A full version of this article will appear in the Spring edition of Scottish Gamekeeper
