THE DEER TRIBE 



253 



troops of from four to a dozen, or singly, 

 while during the rutting- .season tin- animals 

 rove in more considerable herds. In jungle 

 and thickly forested regions it is a hard 

 matter to come up with the sambar <>n t« mt. 

 and it is there usually shut from elephant- 

 back, by the aid of heaters. [n more 

 open hill country it affords good stalking. 

 In Ceylon it is hunted with hounds, and 

 yields in this way also capital sport. These 

 animals seem to revel in heat, and love 

 to shelter themselves in hot, stifling valleys; 

 they drink only once in two or three days. 

 It is a noticeable feature in connection 

 with the antlers of the sambar that they 

 are not invariably shed annually, as with 

 most of the deer kind. In Ceylon, accord- 

 ing to Sir Samuel Baker, they are shed 

 " with great irregularity every third or 

 fourth year." 



Lieutenant-Colonel Reginald Ileber 

 Percy thus writes concerning the sambar, or 

 sambur: " Compared with the Kashmir stag, 

 red deer, or wapiti, he looks like an ugly, 



*v"3L 



Photo by the Duchtss of Bedford} 



JAVAN RUSA STAG 



This deer is a near relative of the sambar, but has a somewhat different 

 type of antler 



17 



FORMOSAN SIKA STAG 



Like its Japanese kindred, this deer is spotted only in summer 



coarse, underbred brute. . . . As the sambur 

 is almost entirely noct rnal in its habits, it 

 is most commonly shot in drives, and in many 

 places it is almost impossible to obtain 

 sambur otherwise; but where it can be 

 managed, stalking is, of course, far better fun. 

 The sportsman should be on his ground just 

 before daylight, and work slowly through the 

 forest at the edge of the feeding-grounds, 

 taking the bottom of the hill if there are 

 crops on the plain below, or, failing these, 

 the edges of the open glades in the forest. 

 Presently, if there are any sambur about, he 

 will hear their trumpet-like call, and, creep- 

 ing on, see two or three dark firms moving 

 among the trees. In the grey of the morn- 

 ing it is often very hard to distinguish a 

 stag from a hind, and the writer has on 

 several occasions had to wr.lt, after viewing 

 the herd, till there was light enough to 

 pick his stag. Even in broad daylight it is 

 difficult to judge the size of a stag's horns 

 as he stands motionless in the deep gloom 

 of the forest, and what little can be seen 



