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In 1815, a small ad appeared in the London Times. There was no finer place to shoot than the estates of his grace the Duke of Gordon, it announced; the rates were attractively low. The land he was advertising was that of Glenfeshie, which was at the time one of only seven deer forests in Scotland.

Glenfeshie today lies within the boundaries of the Cairngorms National Park but is privately owned, and although it is still run as a shooting estate there are now dramatically fewer deer than before. The estate factor, Thomas MacDonnell, has overseen a cull reducing the density of deer on the estate from over 40 per square kilometre – ‘agricultural densities’, as he puts it – to about 1. As a result the glen’s ecology is re-establishing itself. Ramblers and walkers are welcome visitors to the estate.