THE National Trust has been forced to change its deer culling policy following outrage from a group of Grasmere residents who saw two red deer stags slaughtered by a stalker just metres from their homes.

Residents who live in High Fieldside and The Croft this week received a letter from the charity's North West Director, Tiffany Hunt, apologising "wholeheartedly" for the way the animals were culled.

The National Trust is now to produce a publicly available management plan that will declare areas close to Grasmere non-shooting zones.

The shooting of the stags took place in a field on Saturday afternoon in full view of residents who could not believe what was happening before their eyes and emerged from their homes to protest at the killings.

They claim that one of the stags was not properly killed and was still kicking and writhing on the ground as the stalker and a local farmer attended to the first animal to be dispatched.

Residents said the second deer to be killed had been "frozen" by the killing of the first stag and had stood rooted to the spot "its eyes as wide as saucers" before it was also shot.

Fourteen-year-old Amy Burton witnessed the shooting of the second deer from a bedroom window and was "extremely upset" by what she saw and has since been suffering bad dreams.

"I saw the second deer get shot.

I saw the bullet go in and saw a dot on its side.

It got shot in the hind leg," she said.

" It staggered and was shot again.

They (the stalker and farmer) took the first deer and were ignoring the one that was alive."

A hind that was with the two stags took flight and cleared a wall, ran over a road, almost colliding with two cyclists, through a play area, and onto the Grasmere sports arena where the village football team was playing Endmoor.

One of the Grasmere players, Chris Carrs, said it then jumped a fence, ran across the main road, leapt another fence before "trotting away quite calmly" up towards Butter Crags.

National Trust property manager David Wilkinson said the stalker believed that he had killed the second deer with just one shot.

He had fired a second shot at the first deer because he was concerned that it would get up.

Residents told the Gazette that they were not opposed to the culling of the deer but were angry that the shooting took place in such a public place at 2.20pm on a Saturday when there were likely to be children and elderly people around.

"I thought it was an act of barbarism to do it when they did," said Sheila Scott.

"It was distressing to see animals that you have come to know and love just felled like that." Ken Ward, of The Croft, said the incident made him feel "physically sick."

On Tuesday the National Trust's property manager, David Wilkinson, and forestry co-ordinator Nick Walmsley met with residents and " apologised unreservedly" on behalf of the charity.

Mr Walmsley said the stalker was under pressure from local farmers to get rid of the stags with the end of the stalking season ending on Sunday.

" He was under pressure and made the decision to pull the trigger there and then and then realised that he shouldn't have," said Mr Walmsley during the meeting.

"We are apologising unreservedly that they were shot in the position that they were.

It will not happen again."

He said that the stalker had spent a lot of time in Grasmere trying to cull the deer in a sensitive way and out of the public gaze.

"It came to a head and he made a decision to shoot them in this area.

He added: "His judgement has always been good.

On this occasion he was under general pressure."

Mr Walmsley said that over the past couple of years the red deer herd around Easdale, Grasmere, had become stronger and, because of foot-and-mouth last year, their numbers had grown because stalking could not take place and they had moved to lower ground to feed in fields where there was no stock.

He said the National Trust needed to control the levels of red deer because of "unacceptable levels" of damage to agricultural crops, young trees and structures such as dry-stone walls.

A local farmer supported the stalker's actions claiming that the deer population was getting out of control.

He told the Gazette that last year he lost 100 bales of silage because of deer grazing on his land and it had cost him around £2,000.

The National Trust said that between 15 to 25 red deer were culled in the South Lakeland area in a year.

The carcasses were butchered by the stalker and sold on to licensed game dealers.