Purpose
Other than man, carnivorous predators of adult deer have long been hunted to extinction in Britain. In most cases the objective is to maintain a stable and healthy population of deer and to achieve this will require a cull of about 30% of the population each year. This is not random, and a population/age census will have been carried out each year to determine the age and sex profile of those to be culled. Injured (often caused by dog attacks, being caught in fences and car collisions) or sick animals are given priority, then barren or very old animals and after that selected animals resulting in a balanced pyramid profile with a few old animals of each sex at the top with increasing numbers of each sex down to the yearlings at the bottom. The males at the top of the pyramid are often trophy animals attracting wealthy sportsmen who pay large sums for shooting them. If population reduction is required, more females will be culled. If a population increase is required, only injured or sick animals will be culled.
A rifle is used that complies with the minimum requirements of the Deer Act in calibre and ballistic performance. There are differences in the law between Scotland and England & Wales and popular calibres are .243, .270, .303, .308, 6.5x55mm, .25-06, and .30-06. In recent times the use of sound moderators ("silencers") has greatly increased as a health and safety measure.
Read more about this topic: Deer Stalking
Famous quotes containing the word purpose:
“In using the strong hand, as now compelled to do, the government has a difficult duty to perform. At the very best, it will by turns do both too little and too much. It can properly have no motive of revenge, no purpose to punish merely for punishment’s sake. While we must, by all available means, prevent the overthrow of the government, we should avoid planting and cultivating too many thorns in the bosom of society.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“A major misunderstanding of child rearing has been the idea that meeting a child’s needs is an end in itself, for the purpose of the child’s mental health. Mothers have not understood that this is but one step in social development, the goal of which is to help a child begin to consider others. As a result, they often have not considered their children but have instead allowed their children’s reality to take precedence, out of a fear of damaging them emotionally.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“No further evidence is needed to show that “mental illness” is not the name of a biological condition whose nature awaits to be elucidated, but is the name of a concept whose purpose is to obscure the obvious.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)