"I HAVE an early start. My two girls, Islay and Diana, get up for school and I'm usually out by about 7.45am. The morning is the best time on the hill. After rain everything smells so earthy. On bright mornings the sun hits the heather, the dew on the cobwebs is lit up like thousands of sparkling jewels. It is magical. Or sometimes there is mist in the valley and the hilltops look like islands in a sea.

I wanted to farm, but drifted in tourism. In retrospect, thank goodness. It's hard to be a farmer now. I was a stalker and someone suggested photostalking, where people go out with cameras and binoculars and try to get close to deer. But I found people didn't really want to get wet and cold, or to tramp through peat bogs, or they didn't have the right clothes. I also found you could get to see a lot more if you took the Landrover.

My wife Julie was really the catalyst for starting the business.

About 150 years ago people would have headed off with their kilted ghillies, their whisky and their shortbread. We are the modern equivalent. Time is really the key.

People are buying our time. To get to 3000ft would take all morning, we can do it 35 minutes. It's so easy. You don't need all the gear.

You can go in high-heeled shoes if you want. And we don't kill anything. At least not intentionally.

In the mornings we can see deer, eagles, mountain hare, ptarmigan, wheatears, meadowpippets and grouse. The grouse are my favourite, full of character. They really strut their stuff and their call is amazing. I have it as my ring tone in fact. It goes - now how does it go? Oh, 'Put - put - put, ' to start, then it builds and builds until it seems to say, 'Go back! Go back! Go back!' We take a grouse call and once you start them off they are all cackling away. And grouse are so cocky. They stand upright on the top of a rock or a heather knoll and seem to say, "This is mine, keep out or else." Then their heads bob up and down and they do this thing called towering in which they fly away up then come fluttering and cackling down again.

But their numbers are down; there have been hardly any chicks this year. All the birds are down, all the insects are down, it's been like that for the last five years because spring has been so bad.

In the middle of the day sometimes we run big corporate lunches. The season is so short - April to October - so we have to do this sort of thing. We only do it on about 40 days a year, but they account for 60% of our income. The idea it that it is like an African safari, in Scotland. We drive people up to a marquee in a wooded glade of old pines at 1600ft. It's rustic, but you can look out to Glen Lyon and across to Schiehallion. There they have a meal and perhaps a falconry display. A lot of these guys have eaten in the best five-star restaurants in the world. We serve them things like salmon and smoked venison in these amazing surroundings. It's something they never forget. Five-star restaurants are ten-a-penny, but how many people have had a meal at 1600 feet?

Every group is different. But you can give them a good time on your terms not theirs. Even if they go away remembering one thing, one tiny, tiny message about conservation or endangered species, there's always something.

One group said the highlight of the day was when a guide came out of the heather with all this shit in his hands - to show them that grouse and mountain hare had been there.

That's what they remembered.

If all else fails we tell them about the history of the Highlands, about the last 300 years, about the population decline and about Culloden. They always like the clan warfare bit. We bring in a couple of Highlanders who leap out of nowhere in full dress with their broadswords and targes (shields).

That goes down well. And people love having a shot of the bagpipes.

Although we are trying to shake off the whisky and tartan image, people do love it.

If I have been out in the morning I go somewhere totally different in the afternoon so it's fresh for me and the visitors. We use about 10 estates so we are not going back again and again to the same parts.

We have joined Wild Scotland, an association of wildlife operators.

Scotland has such variety for such a small area. You can see eagles and red deer here in the morning then a minke whale near Mull in the afternoon. The key with all the organisations is that we don't destroy the very thing we want to see. We make sure there is no overuse or disturbance.

Here in Glen Lyon we pay the landowners, so they are happy. But we help them too. We tell people about the landowners' efforts to preserve the land, and explain to people why deer need to be culled.

We do a good PR job for them.

Perhaps we should charge them!

When it's a horrible day with mist and driving rain I think it might be nice to be tucked up in a warm office. But 99.9% of the time I think I am lucky. I meet a lot of different people, and the more I meet, I suppose, the more I am reminded that I have a fantastic job.

In the evening sometimes I take people to Foss. It's at 2800ft. It's a wonderful place. You can see 60 miles all directions: the Nevis range, the Lomond hills and all the way to Fife. It's so peaceful. The silence is deafening. It's the place to have a whisky as the sun goes down. That's probably my favourite place to be.

Highland Adventure Safaris, (01887 820071 or www. highland adventuresafaris. co. uk) Do you know someone who would make a good subject for This Life?

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