WA YS OF RED DEER. 89 



Deer are extremely nervous at the sound 

 of a gun. A single report will drive them all 

 away, and as the echo rolls along the wooded 

 hills every stag will start. Those whose 

 orchards are entered by the deer sometimes 

 fire off a gun to drive them away, the noise 

 being sufficient. Though so timid in some 

 ways, and especially by day, the deer are 

 not easily alarmed from food that pleases 

 them. If a man ijrets out of bed and drives 



O 



them out of the orchard — their raids are 

 generally made at night —they will very 

 soon return after he has retired. In fact, it 

 is almost impossible to keep them out of 

 places to which they have taken a fancy. 



There are some very large covers near 

 Porlock running alono; the coombes — alto- 

 gether nine miles of oak woods. Anywhere 

 else but on Exmoor, where everything is on a 

 large scale, and distance is the most marked 

 feature, nine miles of woods would be called 

 a forest. On Exmoor a forest is only a 

 cover. In these great covers the deer have 



