274 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



steadily there, the jingHng kept going, with the result that the ' 

 deer is so dazed that it will often allow the party to go close up j 

 to it before the sportsman fires. Both Eld's deer and sambur ' 

 may be shot in this way, and the writer has been told that 

 hares, and occasionally deer, will allow themselves to be i 

 approached till they can be speared or knocked on the head , 

 with sticks. This, of course, is not a very high class of sport, ' 

 but in many of the coast districts stalking in the jungles is i 

 almost impossible. 



The horns of Eld's deer are very difficult to measure in the \ 

 ordinary way, owing to the extreme smallness of the burr, the ! 

 back of the beam in good specimens touching the skull, and - 

 because the brow antler does not form an angle with the beam 

 but is simply a prolongation of the curve of the horn. 



^ i 



XXVII. THE CASHMERE STAG {Cervus cas/i/uinanus)—STEK^- 

 DALE, KiNLOCH. {Cetvus lVal/uhu')—]EKDOS, Ward 



Cashmere: Hangal^ Barasingh 



This is the stag par excellence of India. A sambur has a fin( 

 head and so has a swamp deer, but neither approaches in beauty/j 

 to a barasingh. A good stag's head is one of the trophies ot 

 the Himalayas, but unfortunately it is getting scarcer year by 

 year. Sheep and cattle affect this deer but little, as they keep | 

 more or less to the open downs and glades ; but the yearly j 

 increasing herds of buffaloes that come up from the plains to j 

 graze in Cashmere during the summer, at the very time that 

 the stags are growing their horns, are the real mischief-makers. 

 Buffaloes delight in plunging through dense forest, and they 

 and their attendants w^ll clear the deer out of any valley. Un- | 

 fortunately for the sportsman, buffaloes pay for their feeding in ; 

 taxes and produce, while deer do not. The best step as regards \\ 

 preservation that the Cashmere authorities have taken as yet is I 

 the creation of a Royal Preserve between the Sindh and Liddur i j 

 rivers, and if they would only exclude buffaloes from this tract ;,j 

 entirely it would form a real sanctuary, which would immensely \ 



