56 ERCHLESS AND FARLEY, 1918 



half a mile from where we lost him in the dark on 

 Saturday; another hour of daylight and we should 

 have got him easily. 



On the 20th of September I got a small 

 6-pointer weighing 11 stone 2 pounds on Boa, 

 not far from the little loch beside the path to 

 Glengowrie. The stalk was easy, ditto the shot, 

 but not immediately fatal, and the stag stood 

 without moving or dropping for a long time. 

 After waiting several minutes, Eraser and I deter- 

 mined to make a short detour so as to get quite 

 close up to him, as we were 150 yards from him 

 where we were; and after extraordinary pre- 

 cautions, which seemed to me unnecessary, we got 

 quite near him and I did the necessary; but it 

 must have been quite half an hour between the 

 two shots, and the stag never moved all that time : 

 he just stood looking very sick and very shaky, 

 but he never dropped. My first bullet had hit 

 him rather far back and high up near the spine, 

 and I conclude he was suffering from concussion of 

 the spine, which made him quite rigid and pre- 

 vented him from falling and also from moving. 

 Eraser was extraordinarily cautious over the 

 second stalk ; he seemed to think it was much more 

 difficult than the first, and evidently did not want 

 a repetition of our last week's experience. I 

 think we might have saved ourselves all the trouble 

 we took, and crept straight up and finished him off, 

 but of course we did not know that he would stand 



