FIELD NOTES ON GAME 201 



from the following story, the approximate accuracy 

 of which I see no reason to doubt. Morse's shikari 

 one day, discussing sport in general, told us that 

 about eighteen or twenty years ago he and one 

 companion, shooting in Jilgalong, killed fifty stags 

 in a month, and he wound up by naively remarking 

 that he could not imagine where they had all gone 

 to now. 



The calling season varies a little, but may gener- 

 ally be said to begin about the ist of September, 

 and to last a month or rather more. The stags call 

 best in cold weather. The very beginning of it 

 should, I think, be the best time, as most of the 

 mud holes in which the stags roll are high up i.e. 

 just above pine-forest level and they should then 

 be more easily seen than later on, as during the 

 progress of the rut they work steadily downwards, 

 again going up further after it is over ; they are 

 great travellers, and consequently very difficult to 

 come up with. 



In his book of horn measurements Mr. Rowland 

 Ward states that the Altai wapiti, though smaller 

 and shorter on the leg than the American one, has 

 absolutely larger antlers. This statement is, I 

 think, a mistake. Certainly we saw no horns to 

 justify it, and the measurements given in Mr. 

 Ward's book are not nearly so big as those of 

 the American animal. We saw lots of horns in 

 Kuldja, among them some twelve pointers, which, 



