296 A YEAR OF SPORT AND NATURAL HISTORY. 



Let us now glance at one of the methods of pursuit usually 

 employed in Scotland, for that is nowadays their main habitat, 

 though roe are still fairly abundant in parts of Dorsetshire and 

 Somersetshire (I remember seeing no less than seven one day 

 when hunting with the Cattistock hounds a few years ago). 

 As stalking roe-deer will most commend itself as a form of 

 pursuit to him who loves to kill his game unaided, we will 

 describe that form of sport. But it is not to be imagined that 

 there will be any spying the ground, any great number of miles to 

 be traversed, any great exertions, or any stalker to take you 

 up to your game, and, after making you assume every undignified 

 attitude and contortion of which the human body is capable, 

 finally put a rifle into your hand and tell you to " tak' time." 

 Our sport will perhaps be more prosaic, less fatiguing, and yet 

 hardly less satisfactory, and if by our own individual skill and 

 observation we attain our object to wit, the shooting of a roe- 

 buck with a good head we shall feel nearly as proud as the 

 slayer of a " muckle hart." 



We will suppose you are on suitable ground, a stretch of beech, 

 oak and fir forest, with young plantations trending up to some 

 mountain ridge, where the young trees get smaller in growth the 

 higher the altitude ; the day a bright crisp one towards the end of 

 November, and the afternoon at your disposal. Your weapon a 

 Holland's rook rifle or a Winchester repeater the latter perhaps 

 for choice. We will suppose you know your ground, and that 

 during the summer and autumn months you will have made 

 yourself acquainted with the habits of your game noticed their 

 " runs," observed where they go to feed, and that you have 

 marked some trees round which the roe are in the habit of 



