DEER-STALKING AND COURSING 



KFORE fire-arms came into use at all the Scottish 

 herds of deer were made to afford sport of a kind. 

 In Sutherland it was the practice to drive them 

 into the ' deer dykes,' two rough stone walls about 

 a quarter of a mile long, a hundred yards apart at one end and 

 gradually approaching till the further ends formed a narrow 

 exit. The deer were driven into the width of the V, and the 

 sportsmen awaited them at the other end to kill at their 

 pleasure as the animals strove to escape. 



More picturesque, if not less like butchery, was the system 

 prevalent in another part of Sutherland, where the conforma- 

 tion of the coast lent itself to the business. A strong force of 

 men with dogs surrounded the herds on the land side and drove 

 them into the sea : boats were lying in concealment among the 

 rocks, and when the deer took the water, the attack was made 

 ■with spear and bow. 



Organised drives on a large scale were undertaken early 

 in the seventeenth century. Taylor, the ' Water Poet,' has this 

 account of one such, to which the Earl of Mar in\'ited numer- 

 ous guests, in 1618 : — 



' The manner of the hunting is this : — five or six hundred 

 men doe rise early in the morning, and they doe disperse them- 

 selves divers wayes, and seven, eight, or ten miles compass, 

 they doe bring or chase in the deer in many beards (two, three, 

 or four hundred in a heard) to such or such a place as the noble- 

 men shall appoint them ; then when the day is come, the lords 

 and gentlemen of their companies doe ride or go to the said 

 places, sometimes wading up to the middles through bournes 



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