DEER IN SCOTLAND 355 



good deer, the yearly tenants possibly shoot bad stags, and 

 make up their number in this way. These bad stags are 

 mostly young beasts which ought to come in for the rifle of 

 some future tenant. So are prospects ruined by the " limits " 

 that ought to improve them. Forests of this character are 

 well known, and only find tenants amongst the uninitiated, 

 who are too proud or too busy to ask for information. 



On the other hand, where forests are let on lease or kept 

 in the hands of proprietors, a totally opposite system of 

 "nursing" sometimes goes farther than sporting sentiment 

 approves. At one time, deer wire was much resorted to in 

 order to keep the fat winter-fed stags at home. But a park 

 stag has no sporting value, and so the wire has to a great 

 extent been abandoned. But feeding by hand is increasing. 

 The fact is that there are more deer than the forests will 

 support both in winter and summer, and deer that are fed get 

 as tame as calves in the winter. In the autumn the shooter 

 will not be able to detect this result of hand feeding, but he 

 is very likely to hear of it, or even to see pictures taken of the 

 wild deer herd playing in the presence of the camera. This 

 is calculated to lower the values of deer forests, as the idea 

 of the red deer's wildness is reduced. 



Much more might be done than has been attempted by 

 introducing fresh blood from the Caucasus, where the stags are 

 as big as wapiti, and in the Carpathians cross freely with the 

 Western sort to be found in Scotland. The two varieties meet 

 naturally in the Carpathian Mountains. The wapiti second 

 crosses are not considered successful. They are wapiti without 

 the size, and red deer without the antlers. But some of the 

 first crosses have been fine beasts. Crossing is rather out of 

 favour in Scotland, because park deer were used for the 

 purpose, and park deer are supposed to introduce domestic 

 habits and appearance. But in the wild high altitudes of the 

 Caucasus is a race of deer as wild, as hardy, and twice as big 

 as those of Scotland, and also they have splendid heads, out 

 of all proportion more massive than the Scotch stags' heads. 



His Majesty the King prefers deer driving to stalking. 



