150 A HUNDRED YEARS 



My uncle says : " Watson by daybreak was on the 

 top of Bathais Bheinn with swan shot in one barrel 

 and a bullet in the other, peering over the rock. Away 

 sailed one of the eagles, but the swan shot dropped him 

 on the heather below the rock. Another eagle from 

 the nest on the other side of the hill came to the same 

 end. Then Watson hid himself among the rocks near 

 where a wounded eagle was flapping his wing, and a 

 third eagle, coming to see what this meant, was invited 

 by a cartridge to remain, making one and a half brace 

 of old eagles before breakfast. Then, to shorten matters 

 with the two big chicken eagles, he climbed the hill again, 

 and ere his bullets were all used up both of the young 

 eagles were dead, having got more lead for breakfast than 

 they could digest, and their remains were visible on the 

 shelf of the rock for many a year after. I wait to hear 

 of the gunner in Britain who could show his two and a 

 half brace of eagles bagged in one day before breakfast.*" 



Watson was undoubtedly a first-rate killer of foxes 

 and eagles, but I think we have as good vermin-killers 

 in the twentieth century as were to be found at the 

 beginning of the nineteenth. My stalker, Donald 

 Urquhart, at Kernsary in the winter of 1918-19, killed 

 twenty-five foxes. He once got two eagles and two foxes 

 . in one day. Two seasons running he got ten eagles, and 

 two seasons running he got seven eagles. One day he 

 went out to shoot hinds and visit traps. First he got 

 a wild-cat in a trap. Shortly afterwards he got a hind; 

 he visited three other traps, getting an otter in one trap 

 and a fox in another, and then he shot a hind on the way 

 home — a useful day's work for a stalker. 



