THE DEER OF INDIA 



being earlier the warmer it may be) till October 

 1 5th or 2oth. He also mentions that the finer 

 the weather, the more frequent will be the calling, 

 and that during the commencement of the rutting 

 season, the bellowing is heard only at night. Stags 

 are nowadays very scarce and hard to obtain, 

 and Mr. Stone, in his book In and Beyond the 

 Himalayas, considers his bag of two stags with 

 very ordinary heads, and two brown bears, "a 

 good reward for three weeks 'of very severe and 

 continuous work." 



Not only are the animals themselves few and 

 far between, but in the pine forests which form the 

 autumn quarters of a large proportion of the deer, 

 they are not easy to find, or if found, to shoot. 



No one should attempt to seek the Cashmere 

 stag without first procuring and attentively studying 

 Colonel Ward's Sportsman's Guide to Kashmir and 

 Ladak, etc. 



With the best of information at his disposal, a 

 sportsman will be fortunate indeed if he should 

 procure two or three sizeable heads during the 

 calling season. 



An officer whom I knew (Colonel A. of the 52nd 

 Regiment O.L.I.) who had gone to Cashmere on six 

 months' leave the previous year when he bagged 

 both ibex and markhor (including a 46-inch head 

 of the former) returned there on four months' 

 leave in the following autumn, with the special 

 object of trying for stags, but came back to 

 Bangalore without having even seen one. 



Heavy snow drives the stags down to low 

 s 257 



