7 6 Deer Breeding for Fine Heads 



This fraud is easily detected, as a rule, since no two stags 

 have exactly the same character of head ; just as you could not 

 make up a face by cutting photographs longitudinally through the 

 nose, and then trying to fit the half-faces of two different people 

 together. 



Anyone not used to deer might, however, be easily taken in by 

 this kind of faking. 



For many years I had noticed above a pastry-cook's shop 

 in London a wooden stag's head with real horns ; this got very 

 shabby, and one day when passing I saw the head had been re- 

 painted, but the " artist " had taken off the horns so as not to be 

 in his way when painting the head a nice uniform brown, and 

 had then screwed them on again on the wrong sides, so that 

 instead of forming a " U " they made an "X"! 



Stretching the skin of the head and thus making a stag look as 

 though he had been much larger is often done ; and in the case of 

 wild boars the tusks are often pulled out of the jaw and fitted on a 

 stalk, so as to make them look longer than natural. 



A chamois-head may also be lengthened, as well as heads of some 

 antelopes, by cutting through the middle of the straight portion of 

 the horn, where it is crinkly, and adding an inch or two of another 

 suitable horn, working over the lines with a tool so as to make them 

 join well, and then puttying the joints. 



This fraud may be suspected and detected by the disproportion of 

 length and thickness of the horns. Artificial chamois-horns are often 

 palmed off on the inexperienced, and are sometimes very difficult to 

 detect ; and I have also seen stags' horns made artificially which 

 could not be at once distinguished from the real article. 



