Exmoor's Emperor much less than met the eye
The tale of the Emperor of Exmoor turned out to be taller than the media thought, reveals Dougal Paver.
As someone known for bringing his supper home as nature intended, rather than film-wrapped on a polystyrene tray, the saga of the Emperor of Exmoor continues to amuse.
You'll remember that a photographer says he thinks he saw some people at a roadside loading a stag in to a truck. He couldn't be certain about that. He also says he thinks the stag might have been one that he himself had named 'the Emperor of Exmoor' on account of its perceived age and place at the top of the rut.
The stag that he's not certain he saw may have been shot by wicked trophy hunters - although he could offer no proof of that, either. What he could be certain of was that the framed photographs and posters he'd taken of a rather fine looking stag were now selling like hot cakes. A curious coincidence, obviously.
The media lapped it up and the public fulminated. Meantime, those responsible for presenting a more balanced view of how the countryside worked fought a bit of a rearguard, with varying degrees of effectiveness.
We shoot 150,000 deer a year in the UK - and that isn't enough. It's not enough because numbers need to be checked to stop in-breeding; because of the damage they cause to woodland and crops; and because the teeth of older animals wear down and they end up slowly starving to death. In agony.
So shoot deer we must. Get used to the idea.
The whole farrago exposed a continued weakness of shooting interests to secure balance from a suspicious and instinctively opposed media.
You can't blame the media, of course: guns are highly emotive. In our experience you have to drag the media in to the centre ground in instances like this through sustained, detailed dialogue. Clearly, not enough of that is underway.
Meantime, it's likely that the Emperor of Exmoor is still out there. He's not the biggest beast alive in Britain, as MPs who tabled a motion were led to believe. Far from it, in fact. But he looks good in celluloid and never let the facts get in the way of a good sales ruse.
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