Scotland may be trying to unfurl the banner of independence, but when it comes to property, frontiers don’t seem to count for much.

A survey by the real estate agency Knight Frank shows that a plurality of buyers in Scotland (34 percent) come from the wealthy South East region of England and include those who work in the City of London, financed by their seemingly recession-proof bonuses.

According to the April report, 29 percent come from Scotland itself, 28 percent from the rest of Britain and 9 percent from abroad.

What attracts them are the hunting estates, country houses and castles, which cost the same as a terraced house in central London or an apartment in Midtown New York. And, possibly, the fact that prime country houses recorded a 6.5 percent drop in price year-over-year.

“It’s like living in a landscape picture,” John Coleman of Knight Frank’s office in Edinburgh said. “People think it is a romantic notion to buy a castle — and, yes, it is a purchase of the heart, a trophy, for the bankers with their big bonuses, who we are finding are back on track after 18 quiet months.”

However, he added, it also is a purchase that makes commercial sense, because the lack of supply of country houses and estates helps to maintain value.

“It is hard to put a price on rocks and fresh air,” Mr. Coleman said. “The valuation of a Scottish estate is not merely a matter of square feet and the number of acres, which are often rocky and untamed with little agricultural value. We take into account the number and quality of the fish and the birds — and when it comes to stags and stalking, if the corries are deep and the countryside interesting, the value is higher.”

In the Knight Frank survey, the capital value of deer forests was reached by putting a price of £25,000 to £40,000, or $37,000 to $59,200, per stag; grouse moors at £3,000 per brace and salmon rivers at £10,000 per fish.

“Few buyers want the headache of managing an estate as a commercial venture, but even if they visit only a few weeks a year, they cannot afford to leave it standing empty,” Mr. Coleman said. “They hire a couple of local people to make sure they generate enough cash to cover costs and to look after the wildlife.” Such properties also are careful to record all kills or catches to prove the worth of the real estate.

There is money to be made: The cost of a day’s shoot of 300 birds works out at about £35 a bird, so a shooting party of eight might expect to pay £10,500 a day. Accommodation would be an additional £200 to £250 a day per person.

Recently, the Knight Frank office in Edinburgh oversaw the sale of the 350-acre Sanda Island, off the Mull of Kintyre, to a European buyer for a reported £2.5 million. For an additional £2 million, he also bought two other small islands, a five-bedroom farmhouse, three cottages and a tavern.

The office also has on the market Larach Bhan in Kilchrenan, 20 miles from Oban on the west coast. The six-bedroom house stands on 11.46 acres along Loch Awe and includes fishing rights. It is listed at £6.75 million.

Has the recent general election, which returned an equal number of seats for Labour and the Scottish Nationalists, had an effect on the market? Certainly, the pattern of voting kept the mood of independence alive by rejecting the Conservatives, but Matthew Sinclair of Saint Property Search in Edinburgh thinks the election has made no impact on the property scene.

Perhaps the most significant effect on Scottish land values has already occurred, when Scotland got its own devolved government with limited powers in 1999. One of its most controversial moves was the Land Reform Act of 2004, which gave every British citizen the right to roam on private land and for communities to buy any land that was on the market.

The act was the result of widespread resentment that much of Scotland’s land continues to be in the hands of private landowners. It is hard to get precise figures, but in 2003 a privately financed project, Who Owns Scotland, suggested that half of Scotland’s total of 19 million acres are owned by only 343 landowners. It also said 2.5 million acres were owned by private and offshore funds.

Among the landowners with the largest holdings are the Duke of Buccleugh with 270,000 acres; the Duke of Argyll, 173,000 and Baron Margadale, 73,000.

Understandably, perhaps, the legislation caused considerable concern among landowners, with Oliver Russell, owner of the 23,000-acre Ballindalloch estate in Banff, saying he feared a “Zimbabwe land grab.”

Mr. Sinclair said: “The current economic situation is putting everyone under pressure. Assets at the top end will come under pressure to drop their prices. On the other hand, supply may be limited now, but as people need to raise money, more properties will have to come on the market.”

“My prediction is that supply will rise in favor of the buyer,” he added. “You might pick up a bargain. But these days it is hard to say what is a bargain, there is so much uncertainty.

“We have interest coming from the Danes and other Scandinavian countries because they like the sport, properties are cheap, and it is accessible. The Middle East is opening up again, and I have been speaking to potential buyers in Dubai for whom Scotland is fairly unknown. They also love the sporting side, the stalking and shooting.”

He says he is also getting interest from Americans, who are concerned about the U.S. economy and want to invest elsewhere.

The recently listed Dalness Estate in Argyll, 82 miles west of Glasgow Airport, at £2.75 million.

The property includes a Victorian-era stone hunting lodge with five reception rooms and 13 bedrooms as well as three stone cottages in need of modernization. The prime asset, however, is the site — 12,672 acres of open parkland — and the hunting. An annual average of 17 stags have been shot over the past 10 years and an average of 78 salmon have been caught each year for the past five.

It was this kind of sport that encouraged the Danish entrepreneur Lars Foghsgaard to buy The Spott Estate near Dunbar in East Lothian in 2000. Now back on the market for £25 million, the mansion is set in 2,463 acres, with the North Sea and the River Forth on one horizon, while to the south stretch the empty spaces of the Lammer Muir Hills.

The mansion has three reception rooms, nine bedrooms and eight bathrooms. There are 14 cottages, four with permanent tenants who work on the estate, as well as a herd of cows and a flock of sheep. As for hunting and shooting, 3,859 pheasants were killed in the 2009-10 season, along with 3,169 partridge, 112 duck and 18 roe bucks.

Mr. Foghsgaard, 68, says: “We had an estate in Denmark, but the grouse shooting is so good here that we bought this place. I love the outdoor life, and we have shoots 10 days out of every 20 here.”

Mr. Foghsgaard, whose business makes equipment for the handicapped, says he and his wife were selling because they wanted to spend more time with their new granddaughter in Denmark.

He is insistent about one thing: “The rainfall here is less than 27 inches a year compared with the Scottish average of 44. Everyone assumes Scotland is wet, but we have lots of sunny days here.”