By Royal appointment

There can be few people who would fail to recognise a red stag. With its majestic branching antlers, Britain’s largest land animal features on everything from biscuit tins and gift wrap to holiday postcards and a thousand pub signs. Landseer’s classic Monarch of the Glen is a true icon of the Highlands, but from Inverness to Exmoor, the image of the antlered stag represents to many of us the very spirit of wilderness and the great outdoors.

The red deer has been a natural quarry for hunters down the ages. Its size and grandeur inevitably made it the preferred quarry of the nobility, and from the early Middle Ages it was preserved for