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⇓   Best Practice Guides   ⇓

• Legislation health & safety and welfare
• Species ecology
• Records & survey
• Deer management
• Disease
• Culling deer
• Meat hygiene
• Firearms
• Equipment
• Associated information

Welcome to the England and Wales Deer Best Practice Guides

Here you can download a comprehensive range of guides on wild deer management, or find out how to order the hard copy version. The Guides provided online are free of charge subject to some simple terms of use.

By clicking on the subject headings on the left you can view the titles of the various Guides under each subject. If you then click on the title you wish to download, a pdf file will open in a new window. Please be patient if the Guide you want is not yet published (marked *).

Wild deer management and issues arising from the presence of deer encompass a wide range of sometimes highly technical or involved subjects. It can be difficult for even experienced deer practitioners to keep abreast of developments.

The purpose of the Best Practice project is provide a single source of information to help make practitioners aware of:

• the aims of deer related tasks, and procedures for carrying them out effectively or better, based on best current information;
• the procedures that are required to safeguard personal and public safety and animal welfare;
• legal requirements

The guides should help practitioners ensure they are acting humanely, responsibly and effectively, carrying out their activities in a rational and considered way based on the best current information. The guides are compatible with the Deer Commission for Scotland Best Practice guides, are designed to support the Deer Stalking Certificate levels 1 and 2 and to reflect National Occupational Standards where applicable.