{"id":1895136,"date":"2018-03-15T14:44:05","date_gmt":"2018-03-15T13:44:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?p=1895136"},"modified":"2019-12-23T01:30:07","modified_gmt":"2019-12-22T12:30:07","slug":"the-chain-reaction-on-nature-of-a-lack-of-education-or-knowledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/the-chain-reaction-on-nature-of-a-lack-of-education-or-knowledge\/","title":{"rendered":"The Chain Reaction on Nature of a Lack of Education or Knowledge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everyone loves to get close to wild animals right? That feeling of wow am I really doing this, is that wild *animal* really that close.<\/p>\n

That’s what goes through my mind when something is a reasonable size to see the detail in hair\/ feathers\/ scales in my 300mm +1.4 converter (I’m incredibly short and a longer lens is not always my preferred method).<\/p>\n

That moment when you lift your eye from the lens and say “wow, did that really just happen?”<\/p>\n

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The reality of a situation lately is when you lift your lens away and go \u201cwow.. seriously.. did that just happen\u201d because a male member general public are taking pictures of a Red Deer\u2019s anal sphincter muscle with his iPhone and laughing away whilst his wife hand feeds him at the other end from a 5kg bag of Tesco (or any other supermarket) carrots.<\/p>\n

Want to know the reality of a situation? Those deer are managed for meat for your dinner plate or someone else’s dinner plate. They live as wild a life as possible with game keepers keeping their distance unless needed, they receive additional nutrition in the form of salt licks.<\/p>\n

This allows game keepers to place out feed in strategic known sites in harsh weather if needed and it allows them to check on small naturally formed herds for injuries or illness.<\/p>\n

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The deer are allowed to rut NATURALLY .. they head up the hills and fight for dominance naturally. this means that every year the testosterone builds in their bodies, their antlers grow to a size dependent on their age and sexual maturity. The youngsters spar and learn to fight whilst the older stags will often fight to the death to win the mating rights of a group of hinds.<\/p>\n

In a managed situation like that of these deer in question, that basically means there are significantly more male stags in one place of an age where they could challenge for dominance.\u00a0 A lot of those stags will not challenge the main dominant male of the group, and you will find small sub herds of up to 12 females a few young males and one large mature stag. The rest of the stags don\u2019t get any girls\u2026 they don\u2019t get to use their pent up testosterone\u2026 they will be quicker to react and more volatile.<\/p>\n

Now that pretty much means that with out taking into account a 15hh (measured like a horse for reference) stag to the whither has 4 very powerful legs he can kick and kill a person with\u2026\u00a0 he has a head he can bite you significantly with (sounds like a little red riding hood story) and additionally he has these great big pointy things that are great for penetrating vulnerable human flesh.<\/p>\n

Red deer operate on a flight or fight mechanism a bit like a horse\u2026 now you wouldnt walk into a horse field having never known the horse and shove carrots under its face or take pictures of its body whilst standing directly behind its legs whilst its corned in.. SO WHY do it to a wild animal!<\/p>\n

My bottom line is simple these animals are going to do something to protect themselves, and have been known to in the past, its not their fault if they feel caged in and threatened, if you also take into consideration the testosterone levels your pretty much sitting on a ticking time bomb to someone getting seriously injured AGAIN.<\/p>\n

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Being naive and uneducated regarding animal behavior is one thing and that\u2019s something that I wont rant about as not every person has an interest to understand the behavior of the natural world but most of us were raised by our parents or our teachers with a knowledge not to stand behind a horse, not to go in a field of cows\u2026\u00a0 you know the common sensible things to do because if you provoke an animal or scare it, it could hurt you.<\/p>\n

Add in another aspect, undomesticated animals do not understand boundaries they don\u2019t understand how fragile a human body is so if that deer wants a carrot and he wants it NOW ad your not feeding him his carrot quick enough hes going to get in your face and try to tell you to hurry up. He doesn\u2019t have a natural spacial awareness for where his antlers are when it comes to a human so straight away there is a head level danger of getting an antler in the face.<\/p>\n

What if something does happen what if we cause a behavior change in a group of stags to think its ok to expect food out of cars\u2026 well suddenly non suspecting photographer\u00a0 or hill walker who pulls over having seen the stags for the first time, approaches them with the normal safety distance rules that we use, suddenly finds 12 fully mature surrounding him because they think he has a 5kg bag of carrots somewhere\u2026 and he doesn’t!<\/p>\n

So not only are we responsible for our own safety but we are responsible for our actions which could result in the safety of humans.<\/p>\n

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We are responsible to allow nature to be WILD, to have enough respect and understanding to know that our actions have an impact on the behavior of a wild animal. In this situation the deer are managed, but they are managed in such a way that they have very little human contact. If that behavior becomes a negative or a safety risk towards the public then the game keepers have a responsibility to destroy or move the deer to prevent safety risks.<\/p>\n

So when you go and buy your 5kg of carrots knowing you are buying them to feed the deer think to yourself you spending \u00a34 on a bag of carrots could lead to the following<\/p>\n