58 THE RED DEER OF EXMOOR. 



not, and if he has he must track him lo the covert 

 where he has gone to He down. He should not 

 approach the covert for a good hour after the deer 

 has gone in, as old stags are very suspicious, and 

 are apt to remain watching inside the wood, and if 

 they notice anything unusual they will move away at 

 once. 



Wild deer take little or no notice of anything they 

 are used to, but are intensely suspicious of what 

 they do not understand. The writer was out one 

 morning with the late Andrew Miles harbouring at 

 Cloutsham. It was just light, and we were lying in 

 a ditch in the fields near Stoke Pero, watching deer 

 coming over Lee Hill from feeding in the fields by 

 Whitburrow Wood. As a little lot of hinds and 

 calves came along, the farm hands at Pool Farm, the 

 other side of the valley, began making a great 

 clatter loading milk cans into a cart. The hinds 

 just paused, looked, and went on again, but a little 

 way further on they came across the track where 

 we had crossed the hill on foot the evening before. 

 They stopped and sniffed, walked along, went back a 

 little way, and then breaking into a trot cleared it 

 with a bound which must have covered a dozen 

 feet. 



When he thinks the stag has had time to lie down 

 and make himself comfortable for the day, the 

 harbourer comes to the edge of the wood, examines 

 and marks the " entry," and then proceeds cautiously 

 to make his "ring walk" round the covert, thus 



