Conservation

A hill loch in Sutherland with Ben Stack and Foinaven behind

The Belief

The land comes first.

Sutlers & Co. started with a simple belief: wild food is better than farmed or flown-in food. Not sentimentally better, actually better. But that belief only holds up if the land producing it stays healthy. A hillside stripped by overgrazing, a river run dry, a native woodland that never gets the chance to regenerate: none of that produces the kind of food, or the kind of country, we built this business around. More on how that belief started in Our Story.

Caring about the land isn't separate from what we do here. It's the same belief, just followed all the way through.

The Local Picture

What's actually at stake around Scourie.

Too Many Deer, Not Enough Woodland

Scotland has more deer than the land can carry, and too few natural predators left to manage that on their own. Around Sutherland, unchecked numbers strip native woodland before it can regenerate, damage peatland, and push out other species sharing the same ground. Responsible stalking, taking the right animals in the right numbers, is one of the few tools that actually works at scale.

The Pledge

For every stag taken on The Highland Stalk, we make a donation toward Highland native woodland restoration, split between the organisations below.

Who We Support

Organisations doing the actual work.

Their work is real, it's local to where we operate, and it's exactly what our donations go toward.

Trees for Life

Rewilding the Highlands by restoring the Caledonian Forest, the native woodland that once covered much of Scotland, through natural regeneration and direct planting.

treesforlife.org.uk →

John Muir Trust

Owns and manages Quinag, the mountain range above Loch Assynt, not far from Scourie. Part of their work there is managing deer numbers down to levels the land can actually sustain, the same principle behind everything on this page.

johnmuirtrust.org →

British Deer Society

The UK's only charity dedicated entirely to wild deer: their welfare, their management, and the training that keeps stalking done properly. Good reading if you want to understand the thinking behind sustainable deer management before you come out with us.

bds.org.uk →

The Standard We Work To

We stalk to the national best practice guidance.

Saying you stalk responsibly is easy, and everyone says it. So here is the specific, published standard we hold ourselves to, written by the people who set it rather than by us.

Wild Deer Best Practice Guides

Scotland has a published national standard for how deer should be managed and stalked
It covers welfare, safe shooting, carcass handling and culling decisions
We follow it, and we expect every guide working with us to know it

Deer Management In The Round

Deer numbers here are managed across whole landscapes, not one estate at a time
That means culling decisions answer to the condition of the ground, not to a booking calendar
We take the animals the ground needs taken, in the numbers it needs

What It Means On The Day

A shot is taken only when it is safe and clean, and your guide has the final say
If the right stag does not present itself, you come off the hill without one
Nothing taken is wasted, which is the whole point of The Sutler's Table

The guidance is public, and we would rather you read it than take our word for it. It is published by NatureScot, the Scottish Government's nature agency.