Everything that gets you close to wild things — and what to do when you are. Forty years of field craft. One instructor. Small groups. Scotland and England.
I have been watching deer for over forty years. I have also been watching the people who watch deer — and I have noticed that the hardest things to learn are rarely the ones that appear in the textbooks.
How to read wind on a hillside that generates its own thermals at midday. How to move through broken ground without announcing yourself. How to look at a hind's jaw and know whether she is the knowledge-holder her group cannot afford to lose. How to be still in a way that wild animals accept.
These things are transmissible. But they take time, repetition, and someone who has made the mistakes already. That is what i·spy is for.
I am a Regenerative Wildlife Architect — I manage deer for ecosystems, not for trophies. Every course here is taught from that perspective: the animal in its landscape, the shot as an ecological decision, the carcass as the beginning of a cascade, not the end of a story.
Every course is drawn from the same discipline: getting close to wild things without disturbing them, understanding what you are looking at, and knowing what to do next. The tracks are entry points — most people work through more than one.
Close approach to wild animals — deer, raptors, otter, red squirrel — using stalking craft. No rifle. No management agenda. Just field skills applied to the act of witnessing.
Deer ID, age assessment, sex ratio reading, behaviour interpretation, sign, slot, cast. The knowledge that turns a walk on the hill into a managed observation.
Accompany a live management stalk — from glass to shot to gralloch. Understand why each animal is selected. The ecology of the decision, not just the mechanics of the shot.
Rifle handling, safety, zeroing, field positions, range estimation, shot placement. Basic through to advanced. DSC prerequisite support. For certificate candidates and those who want to shoot well.
Carcass handling from kill site to table. Green gralloch on the hill, dealer preparation, home butchery, head preparation for mounting. Nothing wasted, everything understood.
Structured support for the British Deer Society certificate programme. Portfolio evidence, supervised stalks, assessment preparation. The only pathway to professional deer management.
Using stalking technique to get close enough for photography — deer, raptors, otter. You bring the camera; I bring forty years of getting within range without being noticed.
Get within 40 metres of wild red or roe deer on foot, unobserved. No photography agenda — just the experience of proximity to an animal that does not know you are there. The most requested day we offer.
White-tailed or golden eagle territory, with deer ecology woven in. West coast focus — the eagle, the loch, the oakwood. Boat access available on select dates.
West coast otter — the most charismatic and least reliably seen animal in Scotland. Approach technique adapted for lochside and burn habitats. Dawn session recommended.
Sex, age, condition and species identification in the field. Binocular assessment, sign reading, slot, cast, pelage. Built on real animals, real ground — not a classroom.
How to count what is actually there — traditional vantage-point methods, their limitations, and how thermal survey closes the gap. Build a population picture from a morning on the hill.
Walk a live management stalk from start to finish — selection, approach, shot, gralloch, extraction. No rifle for the client. Complete observation of an ecological decision in practice.
Fully guided management stalk for the certificated stalker. You take the shot — I select the animal, manage the approach, and ensure the management objective is met. Your deer, your larder.
Safe handling, loading, unloading, carrying and storing a deer rifle. Correct for new certificate candidates and anyone who wants to revisit fundamentals. No assumptions made.
From zero to field-confident. Position, trigger control, zeroing, basic range estimation, shot placement on deer silhouette targets. The foundation of everything that follows.
For the stalker who can shoot from a bench but struggles in field positions. Sticks, bipod, tree, post, steep uphill and downhill angles. The shots you actually take on the hill.
For the competent stalker who wants to understand the limits of their capability and the margins of safe engagement. 200–300m. Unknown distances. Moving deer targets. Cold bore shots.
The gralloch done correctly on a freshly culled animal — on the hill, in the conditions, with the tools you actually carry. Not a demonstration on a larder table.
From grallocked carcass to dealer-ready. Larder hygiene, inspection, presentation. What a game dealer expects and why — the legal and practical requirements.
Skinning a deer correctly — the skin you might want to keep — and separating the carcass into its primary cuts. From whole animal to manageable pieces.
From primals to cuts you recognise. Haunch steaks, topside, silverside, fillet, striploin, diced, minced. Packaging, labelling, freezing. Nothing wasted.
Correct cape removal, skull preparation, antler cleaning. What a taxidermist needs from you and what ruins the work before they start. For those wanting a skull mount, European mount or full shoulder mount.
Everything in one day. Hill gralloch in the morning on a freshly culled animal. Larder work, skinning, primals and final cuts in the afternoon. You take home the meat.
Targeted preparation for the BDS DSC Level 1 assessment. Written, oral and practical components. Built around what candidates actually fail on — not the textbook.
Supervised stalks for DSC2 portfolio evidence. All six species available across the season. Written evidence guidance, assessment preparation for each unit.
Nobody starts at the beginning and progresses neatly to the end. But if you are starting from zero and want to reach DSC2, this is the sequence that makes each step useful to the next.
Of all the things that cost stalkers their animals, wind is responsible for more than any other single factor. And of all the skills in this programme, wind reading is the one that takes the longest to develop and the one that textbooks handle worst. This course exists because I could not find one that taught it properly.
Sole use, your dates, your agenda. Corporate team days — ecology in the field for land-facing businesses, ESG teams, outdoor brands. Family groups. Landowners wanting their staff trained. Film crews needing a technical advisor on set.
Pricing for private days is based on group size and programme. Start with a conversation — describe what you are trying to achieve and I will tell you whether I can do it.
Open ground and low-season months for deer observation; peak season for stalking courses; year-round for larder and range courses.