Fishing and Shooting, with Alastair Robertson

Most of the concern has been reserved for the deer and the grouse, largely because, apart from being Scottish icons and nice to look at, they are worth quite a lot of money in terms of stalking and shooting lets.

The last time we had a winter that did for the deer was 1993 when around 20,000 perished. I imagine we will find a lot more this time, not necessarily because the death rate has been any higher but because there are so many eyes out on the hills tramping the heather these days – rather like the Loch Ness Monster, no one saw it until mass tourism arrived in Drumnadrochit.

Before landowners are accused of neglect, the Association of Deer Management Groups has made a preemptive PR strike to assure all walkers heading for the hills this Easter that if they come across piles of bodies it's nothing to do with them. It's just nature. But it's inevitable that some self-righteous prat of a parent will say their child has been scarred for life by the sight of unburied deer carcasses.

Whether the child is scarred is a matter of no consequence. But whether we should let deer die is a moot point. They may be wild animals, in which case perhaps nature should be allowed to take its course.

However, we now manage deer and the landscape to such an extent that it could be argued we have a responsibility to look after them. But who decides and how we go about it is a pretty good muddle. The Deer Commission exhorted the estates to carry on with their annual hind cull whatever the weather, in addition to taking out the halt and the lame and the struggling animals that won't survive. On the other hand the stalking estate keepers say the deer should be left alone in the sort of weather we have been having in the hills. If you start trying to get out there the deer will only get spooked, try to run, use up what energy they have left and die.

It is one of life's little ironies that the people who are supposed to be the trained killers want to leave the animals alone. Yet they need something left for the paying guests to stalk, say the cynics. Conversely, the Government agencies, the Forestry Commission, Scottish Natural Heritage and its handmaiden The Deer Commission, all of whom one might imagine would want to be seen to be kind to animals, want the whole lot dead.

Well, not the whole lot. But quite a few. Ever since the huge tax-break forestry plantations of the 1970s were fenced off to deer, the shelter in bad weather has been reduced and is reducing all the time as more trees are planted to fulfil Government carbon sequestration targets – to prevent more global warming like this winter, presumably. And the deer get squeezed.

This article was first published in the Scotsman, March 6, 2010