ROE-DEER SHOOTING. 75 



This also makes it difficult for the unpractised hand 

 to quickly distinguish the buck from the doe. 



The driving is conducted in the ordinary manner, 

 the best results being obtained by the employment of 

 few and quiet beaters. If these will only keep good 

 line, and move steadily on, an occasional cough or 

 remark from one to another, with a still rarer tap of 

 the stick or whistle, will bring the game to the guns, 

 whereas a noisy, shouting gang will certainly have the 

 effect of causing the wary deer to break back through 

 the line of beaters. 



Sometimes hounds are used together with beaters, 

 a practice I would not recommend, although it was 

 in such a drive I saw my first roe-deer killed. It was 

 in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, smallest of 

 European states, that this took place. I was passing 

 some time there, principally with a view to wild boar- 

 shooting, as to the goodness of which I had received 

 a very exaggerated account. Not long after my 

 arrival I was invited by a local hotel-keeper to join 

 what I afterwards found out to be little more than 

 a well-to-do peasants' shooting-party. There were 

 half-a-dozen guns, as many beaters, a couple of cross- 

 bred beagles, and several nondescript curs. Though 

 we began to shoot before nine in the morning, by 

 lunch-time we had only bagged some half-a-dozen 

 hares and a fox. We stopped for lunch by the 

 gigantic root of a fallen forest-monarch, which made 

 a very good table. Unfortunately, the owner of the 

 beagles neglected to secure them. The result was 

 that no sooner had we comfortably settled down to 



