Views from the hill: Deer stalkers' perspectives on land‐use change in the Scottish Highlands

Abstract Land‐use and wildlife management are changing globally as part of efforts to address contemporary environmental challenges. In the Scottish Highlands, the hunting—or ‘stalking’—of deer has entered a period of considerable flux primarily because of national policy changes to mitigate climate change and biodiversity loss. However, professional deer stalkers, who manage deer, other wildlife and land across vast areas of Scotland, have received scant research attention, with their views poorly understood as a result. Via an in‐depth qualitative study based on unprecedented access to stalkers, through the lead author's involvement in an environmental mediation process focused on deer management, we apply the Values‐Rules‐Knowledge framework to explore how stalkers are responding to and influencing this changing context. We find that there is significant heterogeneity in perspectives amongst stalkers, with some highly resistant to and fearful of current and forthcoming changes, whilst others have more welcoming and adaptive attitudes. We also identify interactions and overlaps between and amongst the changing values, rules and knowledge of stalkers and stalking, which is increasingly influencing stalkers' work in the Highlands. We therefore show how the Values‐Rules‐Knowledge framework can be used to identify linkages that are both enabling and constraining of change between values, rules and knowledge in a particular context and, in doing so, reconfirm the utility of the framework. Overall, the paper sheds light on a very significant but previously poorly understood group of people in Scotland and informs knowledge more broadly around the impacts of changes in land‐use policy on traditional forms of land management as well as traditional land users. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.