AUSTRIA 21 



funds may be needed. That changes in this respect are of quite late 

 years becoming- more frequent, even the Field, containing occasional 

 notices of Austrian shootings to be let, is a sign of the times. Trans- 

 Atlantic agricultural competition has sadly reduced the material welfare 

 of many old families, whose forbears used to slay with the crossbow 

 the antlered inhabitants of their ancestral forests, deer whose progeny 

 are now being bagged by the Mauser repeater of some wealthy 

 stranger. In such cases every excuse is to be made, but in view of 

 the manifest advantages for sport which are inherent to long tenures, 

 it is to be hoped that this old-time conservatism will not too soon give 

 way to that commercial spirit prevalent in other countries, and which 

 is in some respects antagonistic to a true conception of sport. 



To come to the incidents of the chase, no general statement con- 

 cerning the niise en scene can be made. Too much depends in this 

 respect upon the local features of the preserve where the novice 

 happens to be initiated into the mysteries of stalking the roaring stag 

 in the middle of dense woods, or tracking a wary old chamois for 

 hours, if not for days, in the rocky solitudes of timber-line regions. 



The Stag, to speak first of what in the eyes of the majority of 

 sportsmen is the principal prize of the chase, is shot in Austria almost 

 exclusively durino- the ruttinaf season, as at other times 

 it would obviously be a hopeless task to seek for your 

 game in the depths of thick woods, for the bare hills of Scotland, 

 which are so favourable to spying, are unrepresented in the Austrian 

 Alps. This puts the sport of deer-stalking on an entirely different 

 basis, and there is no need to make comparisons between the two 

 modes of approaching the quarry. Each has charms of its own that 



