DEER IN SCOTLAND 



THE kind of rifle best suited for red deer in Scotland is a 

 double .303, .256, or .275. These weapons with a hollow- 

 fronted or a soft-nosed bullet can be made to expend all the 

 impact energy within the body of a deer, whereas if hard the 

 bullets would pierce a stag from end to end and possibly do 

 him no immediate damage. Magazine single rifles would be 

 almost as effective if they were not noisy in loading, and single 

 loaders are slow, but almost as extremely moderate in price 

 as the latter. The sporting range for a stag before the 

 express rifles was from 40 to 100 yards. The express in- 

 creased the range at which a true sportsman would risk a shot 

 up to 150 yards, and the high velocity rifles named above 

 are doubtless as deadly at 250 yards as the Henry rifle 

 was at 100 yards. The flat trajectory of a rifle giving an initial 

 velocity of from 2000 to 2400 feet per second is of even more 

 importance than the latter's greater energy of impact, for deer 

 are very easily killed if hit in the chest cavity by an expanding 

 bullet, as those are which are soft-nosed or hollow-pointed. The 

 latter is much the better principle for deer, because expansion 

 is then caused as much by striking the soft flesh or the skin 

 as it is by striking a bone. The cause of the expansion in the 

 latter case is hydraulic pressure, increased with the velocity 

 of the bullet, through the 87 per cent, of water of the deer's 

 flesh. 



Deer forests vary in value even more than they do in 

 rentals. Many of them are let from year to year with " limits " 

 of stags set by agreement. When, as often happens, these 

 limits are so high that the forests cannot produce as many 



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