274 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



steadily there, the jingling kept going, with the result that the 

 deer is so dazed that it will often allow the party to go close up 

 to it before the sportsman fires. Both Eld's deer and sambur 

 may be shot in this way, and the writer has been told that 

 hares, and occasionally deer, will allow themselves to be 

 approached till they can be speared or knocked on the head 

 with sticks. This, of course, is not a very high class of sport, 

 but in many of the coast districts stalking in the jungles is 

 almost impossible. 



The horns of Eld's deer are very difficult to measure in the 

 ordinary way, owing to the extreme smallness of the burr, the 

 back of the beam in good specimens touching the skull, and 

 because the brow antler does not form an angle with the beam 

 but is simply a prolongation of the curve of the horn. 



XXVII. THE CASHMERE STAG (Cervus cas 



DALE, KINLOCH. (Cervus Wallichii} JERDOX, WARD 



Cashmere : Hangal, Barasingh 



This is the stag par excellence of India. A sambur has a fine 

 head and so has a swamp deer, but neither approaches in beauty 

 to a barasingh. A good stag's head is one of the trophies of 

 the Himalayas, but unfortunately it is getting scarcer year by 

 year. Sheep and cattle affect this deer but little, as they keep 

 more or less to the open downs and glades ; but the yearly 

 increasing herds of buffaloes that come up from the plains to 

 graze in Cashmere during the summer, at the very time that 

 the stags are growing their horns, are the real mischief-makers. 

 Buffaloes delight in plunging through dense forest, and they 

 and their attendants will clear the deer out of any valley. Un- 

 fortunately for the sportsman, buffaloes pay for their feeding in 

 taxes and produce, while deer do not. The best step as regards 

 preservation that the Cashmere authorities have taken as yet is 

 the creation of a Royal Preserve between the Sindh and Liddur 

 rivers, and if they would only exclude buffaloes from this tract 

 entirely it would form a real sanctuary, which would immensely 



