278 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



question of " What is Druid jumping at, sir ? " I had just time 

 to say, " He's a deer before him, 11 when, in two or three more 

 jumps over the low tangled bushes the hound roared, and up 

 sprang two does. They were out of sight in an instant ; but 

 directly after Druid brought them round, and I killed them left 

 and right, as fine dry does as a man need look at at this season 

 of the year. The next thing we found was a fawn, which I shot 

 at but did not kill ; when, having changed from the fawn, we 

 took a deer away into the open forest, and after a great deal of 

 cold hunting I got a shot at a doe alas ! she was a wet one 

 and killed her. Whether the fawn that I shot at had joined its 

 mother, and then couched, the hound continuing on the line of 

 the doe, I cannot tell : I tried to find and recover the fawn, but 

 in vain. While on the traces of these deer, like Robinson Crusoe, 

 when he saw the print of a human foot on the desert shore, I 

 was startled with the slot of a red deer, and I was in doubt, as 

 the impression was very faint, whether of a hart or hind, though 

 I was inclined to believe that it was the slot of the former. 1 

 Rumour says, and the keepers say, " there is but one red deer 

 left in the forest, and that is a hind ; " but, for all this, from 

 the single impression I saw, I have my doubts ; and though I 

 am not prepared, against all the above authority, to assert that 

 there is a stag, I should not be surprised to see, besides the hind, 

 a male red deer. It was a single impression where the deer had 

 placed a foot in jumping a bank, and made in dry crumbling 

 dust ; so that though I could swear to the slot, it did not afford 

 me much personal or venison information. 



From my knowledge of this forest I feel convinced that, under 

 the present Act of Parliament, the public money is being thrown 

 away, not intentionally or from any neglect, but from a want 

 of an intimate knowledge of the peculiarities of the different 

 strata of soil, the length of time I have spent in it affording 

 me the means of general and thorough observation. I defy any 

 surveyor, I care not who he is, to march for a few days through 



1 It was afterwards proved that there were two or three stags left in 

 the forest. 



