UNGULATA 45 



increase is mainly due to the hinds calving a year earlier. In Europe 

 hinds do not calve until they are three years old ; here they calve at two 

 years. I am speaking of Otago, and the conditions there are not as favourable 

 as further north. At sixteen months (April ist) a young hind is as large 

 as her mother ; and these young animals can only be distinguished by their 

 rounder and neater bodies, and the darker rufous colour of their hair. 

 They are quite big enough therefore to be served by a stag. Further there 

 are not more of these young hinds in a herd than would represent the female 

 progeny of one year. If they did not take the stag till they were twenty-eight 

 months old there would be so many more of them. 



The great want of a deer herd is either proper culling by human agency 

 or the presence of carnivora to weed out the old and weakly, but above all 

 to break up the family life and prevent inbreeding. Left alone, deer adopt 

 the family life, and where a hind has once bred she will stay, unless forced 

 away by one means or another. The pioneers of the herd in search of new 

 ground, where there is scope as in Otago, are the big stags, after they have 

 reached their third or fourth year, and are living for ten months away 

 from the hinds. They are followed by young hinds. An old hind on the 

 outskirts of the herd in the line of migration is a rarity. A young stag at 

 twenty-eight months will get a few hinds if he can; a forty months stag 

 will frequently have a good herd, and so will a fifty-two months (four 

 years old) stag. A strong three-year old, that is likely to grow into a good 

 shootable head, will, say in 1918, serve a number of hinds; in 1920 when 

 he is five, he will be serving his own daughters (a stag always makes back 

 to his previous year's rutting ground, if he is not driven off it). In 1922, 

 when he is seven and a quarter years of age, he will be serving his own 

 daughters and grand-daughters! As he only got his royal head at six 

 years, and it may take a few more years to grow it to its maximum weight, 

 he has escaped the stalker until he has done a considerable amount of 

 inbreeding. The opinion of those who have had much experience in Otago 

 is that most of the big heads are of deer that are between eight and twelve 

 years of age. Many of them show signs of their teeth going, and as stags 

 are said to live well over twenty years, one would not expect to see the teeth 

 much worn in the first half of its life. Of course, only a certain percentage 

 of stags get good heads, and, of course, the inferior are left. 



In the case of the largest herds attempts are continually being made 

 to thin out the weeds and deer with malformed antlers. Some mal- 

 forms arise from injury to the horns during the velvet stage of growth, 

 but this injury is often due to the fact of the deer being a weedy 

 specimen in the first instance and in poor condition. Polled stags, 

 that is those without antlers at all, are occasionally met with, but these 

 have apparently suffered from lack of food in the early stages of their 

 growth , for there is no doubt that in some parts the country is already 

 greatly overstocked and severe winters reduce the deer to a poor 

 condition. Mr Hardcastle says: 



the great majority of malforms are malformed in the skull itself, and not 

 merely in the bones. A common form is for the pedicle to be misplaced, 



