Intro: This study was conducted to explore the barriers to collaboration in the context of a deer crisis in the Scottish Highlands, where deer numbers in 2008 were higher than at any time in recorded history. The researchers explored the role of recreational hunters in government mandated lethal control. Using both qualitative and quantitative analyses, they determined that hunting traditions, and personal preferences, reinforced by antipathy toward conservations and land stewards were the major barriers to hunters shooting more deer each season.
Methods: MacMillan and Leitch as discussed earlier, used both qualitative and quantitative methods to determine attitudes towards this emotionally heated issue. They started with a mail survey to individual sporting estate owners, and followed that with a series of interviews with selected owners. They selected 172 estates out of 300 options.
Results: MacMillan & Leitch found that estate owners had nuanced perceptions of their role in the ecosystem, and the role of their land on conservation management. They found that most of their surveyed individuals owned the estates for personal as opposed to business reasons, and that they saw themselves as caretakers of the land. They perceived high deer populations as an indicator of healthy ecosystems, and were mainly focused on maximizing trophy stag quality for sport and prestige. (This is foundational literature for what would come to be known as QDM, or quality deer management.) Overall, they found that estate management was shaped by culture, lifestyle, and social identity even more so than ecology or economics, and that conflict persists between private estate culture and public conservation agendas.
Management implications: In order to meet conservation goals, management agencies must increase hunting substantially, and consistently. Estate landowners prefer “soft” incentives like grants and marketing as opposed to taxes and regulation. Owners were also enthusiastic about venison marketing as a way to increase hunting but this is unlikely to succeed in the researchers opinion due to a various economic reasons. Additionally, British sport hunting culture historically has disdain for “hunting for the pot”, meat focused hunting is seen as unsporting or greedy. In order to combat these things, conservationists and agency workers must engage more positively with landowners, and human dimensions will play a large role in the success or failure of those efforts.