214 HUNTING CAMPS. 



judged, as they look very different from different points 

 of view. To be misled into shooting a poor head is one 

 of those mistakes for which a man can never quite 

 forgive himself. 



As an instance of the deceptive impression one may 

 gain, I remember a stag which I disturbed from a 

 drogue of spruces, and which I thought showed the 

 best horns, and with the greatest width between them, 

 that I had ever come across. I fired at once, before the 

 stag disappeared, but on reaching the trail found no trace 

 of blood, even after following for some distance. I was 

 certain that I had badly missed the chance of a lifetime. 

 I made up my mind that the antlers carried at least 

 forty points, and measured forty inches from tip to tip 

 inside the tops a very head of heads ! Following the 

 tracks for another two hundred yards, in the wild hope 

 that the stag might stop and look back, I came upon 

 him lying quite dead in a little marshy hollow. The 

 stag, it is true, was an enormous animal as to his body, 

 but he was old, and the horns were not what once they 

 had been. They numbered, indeed, but twenty-five 

 points, while the span was thirty-seven inches a 

 warrantable and rather curious head, but no more. 

 Yet if that stag had happened to get away my imagina- 

 tion would always have given him forty points, and an 

 undying regret. Undying regret is hardly too strong 

 an expression. In my own small experience I have 

 found that the only cure for such a loss is to obtain an 

 indubitably better head. That, occasionally, more or 

 less removes the sting. This confession may leave the 

 hunter open to the charge of lacking the sense of pro- 

 portion. To miss or to kill any single animal is, after 

 all, a small matter. The hunter recognises this fact in 



