THE CHAMOIS 85 



hundred head of big game, i.e. chamois, stags, and roe-deer, 

 and one was placed in the odd position of not only not having 

 to pay for the capital sport one had enjoyed, but having 

 money offered one in the shape of half of the proceeds of all 

 one had killed. 



CHAMOIS STALKING 



At a discussion which once arose at the table of the 

 Prince Consort's brother, H.R.H. the reigning Duke of Saxe- 

 Coburg — a veteran Nimrod, who for the last fifty years has 

 unquestionably shown himself, next to the Emperor of Austria, 

 the keenest royal sportsman in Europe — the question arose 

 whether chamois would share the fate of their kindred the 

 ibex and become extinct. Somebody made the paradoxical 

 reply : ' Not so long as they are only killed by potentates and 

 by peasants.' While this cannot of course be taken literally, 

 there is yet some truth in it, for it indicates the respective 

 methods of shooting chamois — that is, by driving and by 

 stalking ; the one being the pleasure of the highest in the 

 land, the other infinitely harder and more truly sportsmanlike 

 method being usually only pursued by the hardy peasant and 

 daring poacher. In pursuing the argument that arose as to 

 the respective merits of stalking and driving, the host, whose 

 prowess as a bold stalker in his younger days was well known 

 to all present, remarked with sparkling eyes that he would 

 willingly give all the 149 driven chamois he killed the pre- 

 ceding season for the half-dozen he stalked half a century 

 before in the first season he visited those mountains, a senti- 

 ment with which every keen sportsman will heartily agree. ^ 



Stalking chamois is hard work, often very hard work, but 



' The above was written before the lamented and unexpectedly sudden 

 ieath of this singularly versatile and able prince, who, without question, 

 Aas also the greatest Nimrod of his time. His demise, in his seventy-sixth 

 year, was one befitting his sportsman's career, the apoplectic attack froni 

 which he never rallied overtaking him on his return from a stalk, in which 

 he had killed two 14-point stags. His last words, nmrmured in a semi- 

 conscious condition, were : ' Let the drive commence.' 



