224 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



he was. I asked him which was the best buck, and he at once 

 pointed him out lying sideways to me in the rushes, with 

 nothing but his neck, head, and antlers to be seen, nodding 

 away at the flies. A bare buck got up and stood in the way, and 

 then a black pig thrust his snout into danger ; but at last every 

 impediment was removed, and the buck's head was fair before 

 me. I told Hall I could hit him, but as his head was always in 

 motion at the flies, he rather wished me to wait till the deer 

 stood up for a shot at his body. However, with a rest on the 

 lower bar of the rail, I felt sure of my shot ; so in a pause which 

 the flies permitted I shot the buck, and severed the windpipe 

 close to the great jaw-bones. The deer bounded a few yards 

 and fell dead. A more beautiful buck than this, or a fatter, 

 was never seen ; and as Joseph Hall dressed a deer neater than 

 almost any other keeper that ever came within my observation, 

 when the venison came to my larder everybody, tradesmen and 

 gentlemen, begged that I would buy and kill them a buck like 

 it. It is all very well to ask a man to do this in an enclosed 

 park, but in a forest, and under the circumstances of the deer 

 being a good deal shot at, I declined ; all I promised them was, 

 if they would buy the venison, to do the best I could. More 

 bucks were then demanded from the Crown than Mr. Cumber- 

 batch could give me warrants for, by which I am perfectly 

 certain that, had the deer in the New Forest been properly 

 cared for in bygone years, and a local resident at New Park 

 conversant with the management of forests and "vert and 

 venerie " placed there as master keeper as well as head wood- 

 reeve, there would have been no drain on account of that forest 

 on the finances of the Crown. There would have been none of 

 the enormous roguery which Lord Duncan exposed as to timber 

 and turf-cutting, peat-cutting, furze and rush-cutting, while the 

 grazing of horses and cattle would have been restrained within 

 proper and remunerative bounds. All that Lord Duncan 

 exposed I was aware of ; and if Lord Carlisle will refer, if he has 

 not destroyed it, to a correspondence of mine, he will see that I 

 reported the existing state of things to him. Of all the English 



