OPEN-GROUND HUNTING 295 



a broadside. I tried to get nearer and nearly lost my chance, 

 as the leading does ran and he prepared to follow. Seeing 

 that it was a case of now or never, I lay down, and taking 

 the 200 yards sight very full, pulled, and heard the bullet 

 strike. The stag ran a few yards after the herd and then 

 stopped, when a second bullet, hitting him high in the neck, 

 dropped him on the spot. In the evening and on the sky- 

 line his horns had appeared to be exceptional, but on closer 

 inspection they proved to be very good, but not so good as 

 I had hoped. Yet to kill two first-class heads in one day 

 in Newfoundland is a feat I had not previously achieved, 

 and the days when such an event happens are rare indeed. 



After gralloching, we left the stag where it fell, recover- 

 ing the head some days afterwards, for Steve had his load 

 and the big head to take to camp, where we arrived in the 

 darkness. John had, however, made a roaring fire, and we 

 sat long, talking over the events of this eventful day. 



Since the beginning of things, man has had three dominant 

 passions : to make love, to go to war, and to hunt wild beasts. 

 Whilst time is teaching us that the second of these is not 

 always an unmixed blessing nor an advantage, although we 

 must ever be prepared for it, the first and third will remain 

 with us until the crack of doom. There is a quiet satisfaction 

 in the soul of the hunter who successfully overcomes the 

 beasts of the chase, which not all the arguments of dilettanti 

 and cognoscenti can influence. The healthy life, the excite- 

 ment, and the freedom from care, once tasted, appeal with 

 ever-increasing force to men — I mean strong men, who have 

 seen all sides of life — for it contains the essentials of happy 

 existence, and man, whatever he may be, will always follow 

 the primal laws till the end of the chapter. 



