ii6 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



Frequently, as everybody who has dipped into antler lore 

 well knows, the largest heads, so far as length and number 

 of tines go, are not the heaviest in weight ; in fact, one 

 might almost quote as a rule that the heaviest heads are 

 fourteen and sixteen tined ones, when the animal has 

 begun to set back. Thus neither No. i, 2, nor 3 reaches, 

 by 4 lbs. or more, the weight of a 14-pointer killed by Prince 

 Rohan in Radauc, which, with the small fragment of skull- 

 bone which is usually left attached to the antlers, exceeds that 

 of many a fair wapiti head — the giant of the deer species — 

 scaling an ounce or two over 31 lbs. avoirdupois ; whilst 

 another 14-pointer, obtained by the late Austrian Crown 

 Prince, weighed little less. To find matches for these mo- 

 dern antlers among old historical heads one has to search 

 among the pick of the old collections, and of these history does 

 not always tell their origin. Take, for example, two famous 

 collections embracing between seven and eight thousand heads, 

 i.e. the historically most interesting ' Sammlung,' at the Kin^ 

 of Saxony's castle of Moritzburg, where, in one of the man] 

 halls in which are hung these highly treasured trophies of the 

 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the visitor can see 7^ 

 heads, not one of which carries less than 24 points; and, secondlyj' 

 Count Arco's numerically even finer collection at Munich. 

 The pick of both collections is in the first named — i.e. a head 

 of the unrivalled spread of 6 ft. 3/^^ ins., and of the equally 

 remarkable weight of 41 ^ lbs. avoirdupois. The history of most 

 of the lesser heads in this collection is well known ; not so 

 unfortunately the origin of these monster antlers. In spite of 

 many weeks' researches in the King's private library and in 

 the Royal archives to which the writer obtained access, it was 

 impossible to trace its history further back than 1586, in which 

 year the head is enumerated in an inventory of the Elector 

 Augustus's heirlooms, without mentioning whence it came. 



Returning to modern times, it must, of course, be r^ 

 membered that in the localities producing the monster stags 

 of to-day everything is in their favour. In the oak forests on 



