Deer Man

In this sensuous and moving memoir, a young man forms a powerful connection with deer while living alone in the woods for seven years. 

Geoffroy Delorme does not fit in the human world. As a boy, he dreams of transforming into a fox so he can escape into the forest. As he gets older, he disappears into the woods at night, drawn to the rhythms of animal life. One night, an encounter with a deer changes his life: from then on, he knows he wants to live among them. 

Delorme becomes a creature of the forest. He learns to live without a tent or sleeping bag and forage for whatever food he can find. He blends in with the deer and, slowly, they accept him into their world. He witnesses their births and deaths, courtship and battles, ostracism and friendship over the cycles of their lives. Among the deer, he experiences the beauty, pain, fear, and joy of a life lived as a part of nature, not separate from it. 

In his final year in the forest, Delorme meets a woman walking through the trees. He knows he can stay in the forest and die with his friends—or he can leave, and speak their truth to a human world that desperately needs to hear it. Deer Man is a moving story of what it’s like to be an outsider and how forming connections with the natural world can help us feel less alone. A unique and powerful window into how far one human is willing to go to understand an animal, Deer Man asks us to never take for granted the flora and fauna of our world, and to work for their protection in whatever ways we can.

Geoffroy Delorme is a nature photographer, writer, and deer expert. At the age of sixteen, he began visiting the roe deer near his home in northern France. Struggling under the weight of the human world's expectations, he left civilization behind at nineteen to live among them for seven years. When the deer's habitat was destroyed due to clear cutting, he left the forest. Now, he shares the insights he gained from them with the world.