Books: Fletcher's Game

‘In his autobiography, Fletcher’s Game, the dad of two tells his gripping and often hilarious struggle to create a domesticated deer farm.--The Sun

Fletcher’s Game is a campaigning autobiography which combines a gripping story with thought-provoking views on the relationship between animals and those who eat them. In this new paperback edition, John Fletcher brings his acclaimed account of his lifelong involvement with deer right up to date. Why do stags’ antlers fall off each spring and regrow with such astonishing rapidity? Why is the wild deer population now greater than at any time since the Middle Ages? If, as he was to discover, deer are so easy to domesticate and farm, why had nobody done so before?

Fletcher’s Game answers these questions and more. But it's also the charming and amusing story of John Fletcher's happy realisation that the humane and unsubsidised production of venison is a viable business, particularly in these days of health scares connected with other, more intensively farmed meat. From that first encounter in the Highlands, through the first tentative stalkings on a snowy mountainside with a tranquiliser gun, to his present eminence as one of the world's leading authorities on deer, Fletcher’s Game gives us the whole story.