NEAR MIDDLE RIDGE. 123 



with a maimed shoulder, and a stag. The stag, though 

 partially hidden by the trees, seemed to show a fine 

 head, and we spent the better part of half an hour 

 trying to get a good view of him. The stalking of that 

 stag has, for some reason, always stood out prominently 

 among my memories of Newfoundland. The does, and 

 more especially the maimed doe. were extremely watch- 

 ful, so much so that we had a good deal of trouble to get 

 within two hundred yards. At that range I took a careful 

 look at the stag with my telescope, and made out that 

 he carried good tops and bays and one very large brow. 

 I was, however, particularly keen just then to kill a 

 stag with two equally-developed brow antlers. At the 

 distance it was impossible to see whether the big fellow 

 carried one or two, so I decided to try for a nearer 

 view. Since he had left the shelter of the junipers 

 where I first saw him he had been standing quite still, 

 but no sooner had I crawled well out into the open 

 than he began to feed, moving as he did so. In this 

 way I must have stalked him for quite two hundred 

 yards, until I noticed that he was appreciably increasing 

 the distance between us. The does, who had also 

 become invisible for a time, now fed out on to the 

 ground which separated me from the stag. At length 

 I gained the cover of a dwarfed spruce and, after lying 

 there for some minutes, was relieved to find that the 

 does were moving away at right angles ; the stag did 

 not seem to notice their departure, but remained at the 

 edge of the lake. Taking advantage of this, I crept 

 along some rocks directly above him and finally got 

 within sixty yards, where, from behind a big boulder, I 

 was able to count his points through the glass with some 

 accuracy. He carried four points on each top, six and 



