JOHN Phelps is absolutely right to suggest that deer numbers need to be kept in check by culling, No need for hunts in the 21st century, Letters, March 9.

Correct management of deer should be conducted on the deer population in an area as a whole. Red deer herds are not confined to individual holdings but roam across many holdings. For this reason, a piecemeal and unco-ordinated approach where individual landowners attempt to manage the red deer as they cross their land is highly unsatisfactory.

Stag hunting represents the only such co-ordinated deer management system operating across a wide area in the Westcountry where we have thriving and healthy red deer herds. In areas where deer are controlled only by individual landowners and stalkers, we do not.

In fact, stag hunting has not been banned and still operates albeit in a modified form. The Hunting Act as it applies to it is, however, absurd. The hunts are allowed to flush out deer but they must shoot them as soon as possible. Shooting a deer as soon as possible after it is flushed out is the very worst method because the deer will be running at speed.

To make matters worse the courts have ruled that enough guns must be present to shoot an entire herd if one is flushed out.

This is insane and would make it impossible to selectively cull deer. The police are not enforcing this.

Red deer can do considerable damage to my woodland if they congregate in it. However, I am not expert or qualified to cull deer and, even if I was, culling say 25 per cent of the deer would only reduce the damage they do by 25 per cent. To substantially reduce the damage I would have to kill a large proportion of the animals. This does not make any sense and it is far better for me to leave the culling to the hunts and to use my dogs to flush the deer out of cover using my dogs and disperse them without killing any at all.

Giles Bradshaw

Rose Ash, Devon