Flora, fauna and a stalker's breakfast

A dawn stalk for deer provides the perfect opportunity to experience offal the way it should be - fresh from the beast and cooked to perfection

- Miles Malone

THE MOVEMENT of the muntjac buck can first be seen in the half-light. However, we have to wait for the pre-dawn grey to relinquish its grip, finally revealing the verdant green of the valley below, before we can catch sight of him once more. The buck at last emerges from cover, bold and brassy, fortuitously pausing, framed between thick clumps of bramble. When it comes, the shot momentarily shatters the silence of dawn but the birds soon resume their song – cautiously to begin with, then building to a cacophony as the sun breaks beyond the eastern treeline.

Deer management is most often a solitary pursuit but today I have company. Flora Phillips, better known as Flossy to her friends and growing number of enthusiastic followers on Instagram (@floffal), is somewhat of a force of nature. For her day job she works as an artisan butcher in a wholecarcass butchery in Mayfair. Beyond this she is a passionate advocate for nose-to-tail eating, meat provenance and a champion for her interest in and love of offal. And this is to be her first stalk; her first animal taken from field to fork.