Deer larder at Lairg, Sutherland
Photograph is courtesy of David Sutherland, Aberchirder, who started working there as a Wildlife Ranger (part of Dornoch Forest District) in 1999. He stayed in a caravan located in what was the former Shin Forest office base and stores.
This view of a deer larder was typical of the time when much work had been done to upgrade the facilities to food grade standard. Very different from the old wooden sheds that were the norm 10 years and more previously.
To maintain traceability and accountability a tag numbering system had been in operation for some time. Each larder had a series of unique location and sequence numbers each consisting of two tags. The main tag was fixed to each deer carcass and the small tag with the same number to its ‘pluck’. In theory when delivered to the venison dealer for processing and onward sale the carcass was always traceable. Carcass weights and subsequent invoices also relied on these tags.
At this time very significant time and effort was put into trying to gauge the age of the culled deer to work arithmetically back using a cohort analysis to estimate the populations of deer using the forest. Generally red and sika deer were aged by judging tooth wear. Roe deer were aged by sending away cleaned lower jaws to a laboratory where the teeth were cut across and could then be aged by counting annual rings under a microscope. About this time also a population estimation model was built up using the number of deer dropping pellet groups present in a large forest area. This was by far the least popular activity that the Rangers had to carry out when they had to work their way along a very long single line transect of up to a kilometre and laboriously count all the deer pellet groups that they came across – often searching in longer grass and heather on their hands and knees!
Deer carcasses were always inspected by the wild life rangers on the hill and when processing in the larder to ensure there were no obvious signs of disease or abnormalities. The Wildlife Rangers were given training by vets to spot obvious serious issues and if any encountered the carcass was removed and sent for destruction. All the carcasses and their plucks (heart, lungs and liver) were of course closely checked by veterinary staff when delivered to the game processing facilities.
The deer carcasses from the left are one red, possibly three roe and five or six sika deer.
Download Large Version (989kB)
Groups: Caithness and Sutherland, Forestry Areas