RED DEER 



2 5 



soft-wooded trees or low bushes ; but in summer, when the forest is not so quiet, 

 they often leave it, and, like roe deer, take to the cornfields. For the stag is 

 a cautious animal, which if disturbed invariably runs up-wind, and grows particu- 

 larly shy and restless if it thinks it scents a hidden enemy in its vicinity. 

 When red deer, as in Scotland, live in open country, they detect intruders at 

 enormous distances, and, once they have sighted them, keep them steadily 

 under observation. On the Continent, where they are exclusively animals 



A KOTAL HART WALLOWING IX A MORASS. 



of the forest, during the greater part of the year they never venture out of 

 their hiding-places in the thickets by daylight. At sunset they come out at 

 a short trot to their grazing-grounds, that is the fields and other open places, 

 where they remain during the night, and at dawn slowly stride back to their 

 forest-home. 



Gregarious, like most of their kindred, wild red deer generally live in large 

 herds, the majority of which consists of hinds and fawns : the stags collecting 

 in isolated groups, and, unlike the hinds and young ones, frequenting the 

 higher ground. During rutting-time the old stags very frequently separate from 



