I'm no stranger to unusual stalking situations, but this is definitely the first time I've had whortleberries in my pants. I am crawling down a 50-degree slope right behind my guide, Niall Rowantree. Right on my heels is gillie Steven Grant, 18, dragging the padded rifle case behind him. We are low-crawling through the heather or gorse or whatever the hell you call the wet, tundralike stuff covering the Scottish highlands, trying to keep from getting busted by the dozens of red deer scattered across this mountainside. I don't know about the others, but I'm doing more sliding than crawling. To stop, I have to stiffen my arms and shove them into the ground before me while flexing my toes to vertical and dragging them like anchors. Meanwhile, the farther we travel in this manner, the more vegetation finds its way into my clothes. Every time Niall (pronounced "Neal") stops to assess our progress and the disposition of the surrounding deer, we rear-end one another with all the precision of the Three Stooges trying to burgle a house. I use these occasions to retrieve handfuls of herbage from my pants. We are sneaking on a big red stag, an 8-pointer, lying on a bench several hundred yards below us. At least I think he's still below us. The weather was glorious this morning, when we were glassing the hills from the road below. Since then, curtains of mist and pattering rain have begun moving through from the southwest, reducing visibility to 80 yards.

A Land of Myths and Legends I have come to Scotland on the advice of my dentist. He told me that for the price of an outfitted elk hunt, you could fly here, sleep in a clean bed each night, eat like a king, hunt the legendary highlands, and almost be guaranteed success on red stag. These deer, the largest land mammal native to the United Kingdom, are smaller cousins of the American elk.

For a long time, the beasts were reserved for royalty and landed gentry. Today, they attract English, German, and Scandinavian hunters, as well as an increasing number of Americans who, like my dentist, have discovered that red stag offer a challenging and satisfying hunt. I searched on Google, asked around, and eventually found Corrour (Ka-RAH-wer).

My first impression as I leave Glasgow and drive north into the highlands is one of disbelief. Given that the whole of the United Kingdom is a little smaller than Oregon, I figured the highlands would have the character of a good-size American theme park-you know, a few castles and golf courses, deep-fried Snickers bars (a national specialty, I've been told), and tacky little shops selling plaid T-shirts. Wrong. The "road" from the highway to the lodge and cottage where I'm staying, for instance, is 12 miles long and takes 45 minutes to navigate. One false move and you'd end up 400 feet below in a stream gushing along like a loose fire hose.

The estate itself is 52,000 acres and more isolated than you'd imagine was possible in Europe. Before the access road was finished in 1972, the only way to get here was by train via the tiny Corrour rail station, the highest and most remote in Britain.

It's not hard to see why. Big, stark, and strangely compelling, the countryside is nearly deserted, with a population density rivaling that of Papua New Guinea. This place zeroes in on your psyche and grabs hold. What I'm experiencing is not d¿¿j¿¿ vu, the sense of having been here before, so much as the feeling you get when you meet another person and intuitively sense that you already know each other's stories. Maybe it's ancestral.

This is, after all, the WASP Mesopotamia, the place from which my forebears and those of millions of other Americans were cast out or fled when the highland clans, the last vestiges of the feudal system in Europe, collapsed in the 18th century. Niall says that nobody lived here year-round in the old times. The winters are too brutal. It was only in 1899, when the wealthy classes created by the Industrial Revolution took up the gentlemanly sport of stag hunting, that a grand estate house was built, complete with four stalkers' cottages.

"The clans would send their cattle up here to graze each summer, tended by the women, children, and old men. Younger men farmed the glens below. The Road to the Isles, the route people from the Western Isles used for centuries to drive their cattle to market at Falkirk, runs right through the property. Almost every hill here has a legend or myth associated with it. It's all stinking with history."