Wild Deer Association Ireland

☃️ MERRY CHRISTMAS ☃️

To all our members and your families.

We want to wish everyone a Happy and safe Christmas and prosperous new year ... 🙌🙌

We appreciate your support throughout the year and like always, we are here to help in anyway possible and will continue to voice your concerns with the people in power

So please go enjoy the season and enjoy the holidays and most of all be safe everyone.. 🎄🎄🎄

Yours in sport

Wild Deer Association

Officer's & Committee

Good Evening

Our first ever Carcass Handling & Hide Tanning Demonstration been held in the West of the Ireland in co sligo this Sunday the 10th. 🔥

Have a read of the two posters underneath and this is a free event with a special offer only on the day . 🔥

For booking please CONTACT our secretary, details are below .

We look forward to seeing everyone on Sunday 😊

Handy way of loading in the truck

Hello Everyone

The Wild Deer Association Of Ireland are running a best photo competition with the top prize of €300 for the winner to be won.

Simply summit your pictures of live Deer in there natural habitat and what better way to grab some fantastic shots now while the Rutting in on. 🔥🔥

Please share this post to any photography pages on Facebook and spread the word 🙏

Follow the instructions of the poster below

Looking forward to seeing some great shots

Hello Everyone

The Wild Deer Association Of Ireland are running a best photo competition with the top prize of €300 for the winner to be won.

Simply summit your pictures of live Deer in there natural habitat and what better way to grab some fantastic shots now while the Rutting in on. 🔥🔥

Please share this post to any photography pages on Facebook and spread the word 🙏

Follow the instructions of the poster below

Looking forward to seeing some great shots

@

Natural death is rarely beautiful.

Some people are trying to sell the message that so-called natural death - a death process without human intervention - is in the interest of wildlife and biodiversity.

I am often confronted with claims that, given the choice, the animal would choose the protracted natural death process over a rifle bullet.

A few years ago, I had the misfortune to be hospitalized overnight for observation in the intensive care unit at Hässleholm Hospital. I was in a four-bed ward, and in the bed next to me was a 92-year-old senile woman who had fallen and broken her hip.

She was given painkillers and sedatives, and for most of the time, she was in a state of quiet unconsciousness. But as the medication wore off and she needed another dose, she woke up moaning loudly. She was scared, she was confused, she was in severe pain. When she cried out for her mother, only the rusty voice revealed she was no longer the frightened little child she clearly thought she was. Lying in the bed next to her was like having a front-row seat to a prolonged torture scene, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

Luckily, I got home the next day, so I don't know how many days passed before the little girl in that worn-out body was at peace. Even with modern painkillers, anti-anxiety medication, comforting voices, warmth in the room, and food in bed, death is rarely a bed of roses. The process leading up to death is often a painful and anxiety-filled experience filled with desperation and suffering. Death itself is merely the dividing point between life and the lack of life in the body.

As a hunter - who deliberately kills animals - I have experienced death in nature countless times. I've seen it through the scope of my rifle when I'm the cause of death, but I also witnessed death without human intervention when hunger, disease, or predators end a life. The result is the same. You can't bend the word "death." However, the path to it is very different. While death is not inherently uncomfortable, the process of dying is often extremely painful. There is no doubt in my mind that it is pretty much only lightning from a clear sky that involves less suffering in the death process of a large wild mammal than a well-placed rifle bullet. Being killed by predators can take hours. Dying from starvation or disease can take months. Nature is relentless.

Death is a fundamental condition for all living things. There is nothing we can do about the fact that all living things die, but there are nevertheless many cases where we as humans can reduce the suffering of animals—mainly when we control their living conditions—and we do so in the best interest of the animal.

I don't buy the "what the animals themselves would choose" argument. First and foremost, it's a 100% hypothetical argument with some artificial premises. For an animal to make an informed choice about its death, it must be able to think like a human. There is no evidence that animals can do so. If they were thinking like us, such a choice would make no sense unless the animals know the natural alternatives and clearly understand how the choice will affect their final days, such as a broken leg, worn down teeth, or a total lack of available food will lead to a slow and painful death by starvation. The options available to wild animals do not include the arsenal of distress-mitigating measures that humans almost always use when death is imminent. In the reality of nature, there is no attempt at healing, symptom management, pain relief, or comfort - just raw suffering.

Does this mean that we as humans should worry about killer whales choking on seal pups or wildebeest being eaten alive by hyenas? Should hunters seek out and end suffering in the wild? No, of course, we shouldn't. We are not nature's shepherds and have never claimed to be.

But I have yet to hear a reasonable explanation as to why I, as a hunter, should fail to minimize animal suffering when I have the opportunity. For example, when I pass a traffic-injured deer or am called out with my hound to search for and kill a wounded game animal. Or if, with a fence, I set a clear physical boundary for the animals' lives and have the opportunity to - proactively - keep the population just below the carrying capacity of the area and thus avoid the majority of the animals in my care starving (animals in my fence are animals in my care).

I don't see that suffering makes the universe more beautiful or that my contribution to minimizing suffering (however modest) is in any way detrimental to anything - including biodiversity. Because just as nature doesn't care about suffering in general, it also doesn't care about the cause of death.

Until I get such an explanation, I will continue to kill the mangy fox I meet on the hunt or the run-over cat writhing in pain on the roadside. And I take responsibility for the life and death of the animals I may fence in just as we strive for a humane end for the animals in our stables and for the dog that has become too ill to live a good dog life.

I wonder how many people who praise a natural death process for animals in the wild will ultimately choose the beautiful natural alternative when the Grim Reaper appears on the horizon. No soft bed to lie in, no pain relief, no tranquilizers, no loved ones around, and if they don't choose the hard (but more beautiful) end, why do they imagine an animal would make a different choice "if it had the chance"?

Jens Ulrik Høgh
Nordic Safari Club - Conservation

WDAI Fun shoot all are welcome prizes on the day but booking is essential ,book by texting your name /details to 0877554920 you must use a deer legal calibre you must bring your insurance & fi****ms license on the day,rules & format of the shoot announced that morning the shoot will take place on Irelands No1 range the Midlands Rifle Range this is an ideal opportunity for newcomers to get some practice in & the more seasoned stalkers in the safe surroundings of an authorised range looking forward to seeing everyone there 😃

Making new friends