200 HUNTING CAMPS. 



the antlers carried at least forty points, and measured forty 

 inches from tip to tip inside the tops a very head of heads ! 

 Following the tracks for another two hundred yards, in the 

 wild hope that the stag might stop and look back, I came 

 upon him lying quite dead in a little marshy hollow. The 

 stag, it is true, was an enormous animal as to his body, but 

 he was old, and the horns were not what once they had been. 

 They numbered, indeed, but twenty-five points, while the 

 span was thirty-seven inches a warrantable and rather 

 curious head, but no more. Yet if that stag had happened 

 to get away my imagination would always have given him 

 forty points, and an undying regret. Undying regret is 

 hardly too strong an expression. In my own small experi- 

 ence I have found that the only cure for such a loss is to 

 obtain an indubitably better head. That, occasionally, 

 more or less removes the sting. This confession may leave 

 the hunter open to the charge of lacking the sense of 

 proportion. To miss or to kill any single animal is, 

 after all, a small matter. The hunter recognises this fact 

 in the abstract, yet the keener he is and the greater his 

 experience the more strongly he realises that no game is 

 worth playing into which a man's whole heart does not 

 enter. 



Hardy on that day saw seven deer, but nothing worth 

 shooting. During the next fourteen days we both learnt 

 a very fair amount about September hunting, but neither of 

 us fired at a stag. The few we gained sight of were young 

 animals, and not such as we wanted. During this time we 

 went up-river and visited our rivals, who had secured four 

 stags, none of them very remarkable. 



Just before arriving at Burnt Hill, near the " beel of the 

 Gander/' in Bob's phrase, we began to pass through forests 

 that had been destroyed by fire, and in which the Indians 

 find black bear. To go further was useless, so we deter- 

 mined to hunt in the beautiful country that we had seen 



