Looking Past the Nature Myths
Our real-world English holidays are for people who are drawn to nature and want to spend time in it.
And yes — the familiar Scottish imagery is wonderful.
The classic Monarch of the Glen image — a stag on a misty hillside — is extraordinary.
What we’re not interested in is nature performing.
This blog takes deer as one wildlife example, and shares the different ways they might appear on our English holidays.
As sound
If you’re here in September, I’ll take you to Loch Earn to hear the stags rutting at dusk.
It’s a ghostly sound that fills the hills — something you hear long before you see anything. The noise carries across the landscape, raw and unsettling, and it changes how the place feels.
It’s not a performance, and it’s not guaranteed.
It happens whether anyone is there to hear it or not.
The deer come down to drink at the lochside, so it’s not unusual to see these magnificent animals wandering through the village of St Fillans. Between them and the wild goats, it’s a struggle for any gardeners.
Standing still and listening, you become aware of how much of nature isn’t visual at all.
It’s a small thing to offer, but a powerful one — a pause in the landscape that changes how you’re present.
As Collateral Damage
We will almost certainly pass deer carcasses by the roadside.
They’re easy to look away from, but they’re part of the same story. Scotland no longer has large predators, and changing land use has allowed deer numbers to rise. Cars have become one of the few remaining checks on populations that have nowhere else to go.
There are ongoing conversations about reintroducing predators like wolves or lynx. Supporters point to healthier ecosystems and natural balance. Farmers raise serious concerns about livestock, livelihoods, and responsibility. Conservationists, landowners, rural communities, and policymakers all hold different stakes in the same landscape.
None of this is simple.
The impact of high deer numbers is visible beyond the roads. Woodland regeneration struggles. Wildflower diversity is reduced. Some trees never reach maturity.
Seeing deer this way isn’t comfortable.
But it’s honest.
They’re not only symbols of wildness.
They exist within layers of human decision-making, competing needs, and unresolved tensions — just like the land itself.
As Food
Deer may also appear as food.
We feature it (unless you are vegetarian) because venison is one of the most organic and ethical meats you can eat in Scotland.
Many people would rather eat familiar, packaged supermarket meat than contend with the stronger, more distinctive taste of venison. It’s part of a wider cultural divide.
Sometimes this looks like a burger.
Other times it might be venison masala by Stocks Kitchen — if we’re passing near Bowhouse, for a perfect example of fusing ancient flavours with modern Scotland.
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As a Solution
Land management means deer are currently shot in large numbers.
In many cases, a kill hole is dug on the land and the carcasses are bulldozed in and buried.
Helen Stewart, a Perthshire farmer’s daughter left her family farm to go to university. When she returned, she questioned this practice.
Instead of burying usable meat, she began businesses that divert venison from kill holes into food — supplying both premium restaurants and food banks across Scotland.
Stories from microbusinesses in our region become the material we work with — the basis for real-world English conversation coaching.
“Venison is nutrient-dense, and with food insecurity on the rise, it’s a perfect solution. It’s local, sustainable, and healthy,
Helen Stewart
As a Cliché
The deer motif turns up everywhere as we travel.
You’ll see it on signs, souvenirs, menus, logos — a shorthand for Scotland. (Unless you’re in Fife — then it’s puffins.)
This imagery has its roots in the Victorian takeover of the Scottish landscape, when large estates were reshaped for shooting. Deer were bred, protected, and elevated as symbols of status. They were hunted, mounted, and displayed — their heads fixed to walls, their antlers repurposed as hooks for coats and scarves.
What is now treated as gentle iconography grew out of an upper-class culture of ownership, control, and spectacle.
Tourism rarely acknowledges this history.
The deer is presented as timeless and benign, detached from the land clearances, sporting estates, and power structures that shaped both the animal and the landscape around it.
Seeing deer this way reveals how easily symbols are stripped of their origins — and how decoration can obscure a much more complicated truth.
As a Fleeting Glimpse
We’re out exploring or walking in Scotland, and it’s possible — though not likely — that we catch sight of a herd of wild red deer.
There are ways of moving through the landscape that increase or reduce your chances of this. We walk softly, look around, and pause at the first sign of movement.
These are skills I learned as a child, through years of spending time outdoors.
They’re skills I now use to share Scotland with you.
By looking at this one animal in many different ways, you can begin to understand how our holidays work.
Meaning grows through movement, attention, conversation, and a willingness to pause — whether that’s listening, noticing absence, or sitting with complexity.
This is how deep travel concepts work across our real world English holidays in Scotland: using what is already here as material, letting place shape language, and allowing shared experience to do the heavy lifting.
No performances.
Just real encounters, and the conversations that grow from them.
I’ll leave you withthis joyeous deer encounter filmed 10 minutes’ walk away from Blue Noun Language Hub…
Further Information
Wildlife Encounters
Further ways Blue Noun language hub shares nature
Our language holidays share nature with respect and candour.
→ Learn How We Share Nature and Wildlife on Our Language Holidays
