When I am privileged enough to be out on one of our estates at first light, before anything else has started making noise, I’m looking for what the deer have left behind.
Not trophies. Not signs of “success”. Stories.
A faint slot pressed into soft ground at the edge of a ride. A brushed stem where a shoulder slid through in the dark. A line of crushed dew where something moved with certainty, unhurried, as if it owned the night. Sometimes it’s so subtle you’d walk past it a hundred times and never know it was there and that, for me, is the fascination. Deer are present without announcing themselves.
I’ve spent my life around them. Watching them, studying them, drawing them. Learning their movements like learning a language. How a roe buck carries himself differently from a doe. How fallow herd up and shift across a landscape like a tide. How sika seem to dissolve into woodland edges, as if the trees have absorbed them. How muntjac appear where they shouldn’t be, in habitats you’d never expect, and make you realise just how adaptable and unstoppable some animals can be.
If I had to sit in a chair and answer questions for hours, Mastermind-style, deer would be my subject without hesitation.
I’m fascinated by all of it: the genetics, the behaviour, the way populations express themselves differently depending on pressure and place. The importance of scent, how deer read information in the air we don’t even register. Hair, hide, seasonal change. Habits passed through generations. Where they lie up, where they feel safe, where they cross a valley, where they hesitate. And perhaps most of all, the ability to arrive on the land the next morning and piece together what happened overnight: to read the story written in hoof marks, snapped stems, disturbed soil and damp grass.
When you follow those stories long enough, you stop seeing deer as isolated sightings. You start seeing them as a force, one that can shape landscapes just as surely as water, wind, or time.
Respect Isn’t Softness. It’s Responsibility.
I’ve culled deer. I’ve eaten deer. I’ve shared venison with friends, family and colleagues. None of that contradicts my respect for them. It comes from it.
Because respect isn’t sentimentality. It isn’t pretending deer are something they’re not. And it isn’t looking away when numbers rise beyond what the land can support.
When people talk about “leaving nature alone,” I understand the instinct. I share the desire. But it only works in systems that still regulate themselves. The truth is that in modern Britain, they don’t.
We removed the apex predators that once shaped herbivore behaviour and abundance. Wolves, lynx and bears, animals that kept deer moving, alert, dispersed and limited, are gone. We didn’t just remove them; we replaced them with something else entirely.
We introduced non-native deer species over centuries. Fallow were brought here by the Romans. Later came sika, released into private parks and collections. Then muntjac. Chinese water deer. Species that evolved elsewhere, under different pressures, now operating in a landscape that offers safety, shelter and food at a scale few ecosystems could sustain indefinitely.
At the same time, we fragmented habitats, intensified agriculture, planted woodland to restore ecological function, and produced vast quantities of high-quality forage. We built a system that feeds herbivores extremely well, and then acted surprised when populations responded exactly as biology predicts.
So managing deer is not a choice driven by preference. It is a responsibility that comes with owning land in a human-dominated landscape. Whether you act or not, you are making a decision, and the land will carry the consequences.
The Perfect Storm We Created
Deer populations in the UK are now higher than at any point in living memory with numbers believed to be as many as two million. That didn’t happen overnight, and it didn’t happen by accident.
Many deer species reach sexual maturity before their first year ends. To keep populations stable, it is widely recognised that around a third of the population needs to be removed annually. When that doesn’t happen, even briefly, numbers don’t just increase, they compound.
The COVID-19 pandemic years exposed this reality starkly.
When the venison trade collapsed, culling pressure dropped across large areas of the country. Not because land managers suddenly stopped caring, but because the route from deer to plate broke down. Processing capacity was disrupted. Markets disappeared. Movement was restricted. For many, the question wasn’t should deer be taken; it was what happens to them if they are?
So pressure came off at exactly the wrong time.
Miss a season. Miss a year. And the baseline shifts. Populations rise, and once they do, it takes sustained, deliberate effort to bring them back into balance. That increase doesn’t just affect numbers; it amplifies impacts across already stressed landscapes.
What Happens When You Don’t Manage Herbivores
The impacts of overpopulation are rarely dramatic. They’re quiet, cumulative, and easy to ignore until they aren’t.
Woodland regeneration fails. Trees never get above browsing height. Scrub disappears. Ground flora is grazed out. Riverbanks are stripped bare. Soils compact. The structure and complexity that underpin healthy ecosystems slowly erode.
And the deer themselves suffer.
High deer densities lead to intense competition for food, poorer body condition, greater stress, and the persistence of older or weaker animals that would once have been removed through natural predation. In isolated pockets, this pressure can also increase the risk of inbreeding.
Beyond ecology, there are human consequences too. As deer numbers rise, so do road traffic collisions, serious injuries, and fatalities.
None of this is a sign of a healthy system. It is a clear expression of imbalance. Standing back and calling that “natural” doesn’t make it so.
Our Role at Oxygen Conservation
This is the reality many of our estates sit within: high herbivore numbers, no natural predators, ambitious ecological restoration goals, and a responsibility that cannot be avoided.
Before we manage any deer or large herbivores, we start with understanding.
We conduct habitat impact assessments to see what pressure the land is under. We use thermal drone surveys to gain accurate population estimates. We combine that data with clear ecological objectives: what habitats we want to restore, what processes we want to restart, and what the land is capable of supporting.
Only then do we set a cull plan.
That plan is not arbitrary but rather an estate-specific, data-led decision tied directly to ecological outcomes. It sits within a herbivore management plan that sets out legal compliance, best practice, stakeholder engagement, and consultation with neighbours, local deer groups and landowners wherever possible.
Cull activity is carried out by trained, experienced members of our team and trusted local contractors. Every animal is recorded in real time: age, sex, condition, location, and who culled it, using a single platform that allows transparency, accountability and continual learning.
Nothing is wasted. But there’s the other uncomfortable truth beneath all of this. Even when venison is available, many people don’t want it unless it arrives wrapped in plastic, with a barcode and instructions. We’ve created a cultural distance from the source of our food, and that distance has consequences. It makes one of the most sustainable, local meats available harder to value, harder to move, and harder to normalise.
So, we prioritise our venison entering the food chain, ensuring that it becomes sustainable, local food. Where appropriate, parts of the carcass are returned to the landscape, feeding insects, scavengers, fungi and soils, reconnecting nutrient cycles that modern systems have largely forgotten.
This is not mechanistic. It is careful. It is deliberate. And it is done with respect.
Non-Native Species and Hard Lines
We want deer on our landscapes. But we want them in numbers that are sustainable, healthy, and compatible with recovery.
For non-native species that are causing disproportionate harm, particularly muntjac, we take a zero-tolerance approach. Their adaptability, reproductive capacity and browsing behaviour make them especially damaging in restoration contexts, and allowing them to establish unchecked would undermine everything we are trying to achieve.
That stance isn’t ideological. It’s practical.
The Landscape We Are Working Towards
I want people to walk these estates in thirty years’ time and feel something close to awe.
A landscape that is wild, complex and resilient. Woodlands with structure and depth. Scrub and regeneration woven through open ground. Rivers that are buffered and alive. And deer – not absent, not overwhelming, but present in the right numbers, in excellent condition, moving through a system that can support them. They are woodland creatures after all.
Success, to me, looks like less intervention over time. Fewer hard decisions because the land is doing more of the work itself.
I know full well that the reintroduction of apex predators may not be realistic across much of Britain, given habitat fragmentation, livestock systems and human population density. But until natural processes can take over again, where they ever can, the responsibility sits with us.
We don’t do this work lightly. We don’t enjoy taking life. But we cannot stand by and watch landscapes fail, or animals decline in condition, because making decisions feels uncomfortable.
My respect for deer is the reason I do this. And if we are serious about restoration, truly serious, then facing these realities honestly is not optional.
It is part of care.
Author: Charles Owen, Head of Estates