NEW ZEALAND DEER-STALKING 129 



more favourable condition. To start with, the area of 

 ground has to provide for a much smaller stock, and I 

 fancy that the feed is better. I stalked there for four . 

 days, and during that time saw forty stags. They in- 

 cluded one malform, two one-horned stags (eight- 

 pointers), four seven-pointers, and three six-pointers. 

 This leaves thirty normal stags, of which two were 

 royals (rather on the small side), one was a good 

 four teen-pointer, and there were certainly five nice 

 ten-pointers, which would develop into really good 

 stags in a few years under normal conditions. I have 

 seldom seen a finer-looking lot of deer than in this 

 district, more especially when the fact must be taken 

 into consideration that all the ground had already 

 been stalked over before. 



I embodied the gist of these remarks on the 

 deterioration of the deer in a letter to the Otago 

 Daily Times. It aroused a heated discussion. Mr. 

 J. H. King, one of the most experienced stalkers in the 

 Colony, had pointed out as early as 1905 that the 

 Otago herd was badly in need of supervision. Mrs. 

 Smithson, another keen stalker whom I have had the 

 pleasure of meeting since my return to England, had 

 agitated in 1906 with no result ; various other 

 sportsmen, notably Mr. Hardcastle, had written on 

 the same point ; the only result being that the Otago 

 Acclimatisation Society remained in its former state 

 of sleepy inactivity. Now I have the greatest admira- 

 tion for the Acclimatisation Societies of New Zea- 

 land. They have done splendid work for the Colony ; 



