The game hygiene regulations came into force in the UK in January 2006, two years after European legislation. They state that any person harvesting wild deer for the food chain should be inspected by a “suitably knowledgeable person”. The ‘trained hunter’ qualification was introduced to formally facilitate this, but it does not apply if the meat harvested is for personal consumption.
The inspection starts when a hunter is about to cull a deer. Any abnormality seen on the live deer – before the shot – has to be recorded on the trained hunter’s carcass declaration. This could be that the deer is not moving as normal, has the wrong coat for the time of year and any signs of injury possibly from rutting, a road traffic accident or possibly having been caught on barbed wire, which is quite common.
Once despatched, the hunter then carries out an external inspection
