318 



SHOOTING. 



drowned hart been grey or white, it would have 

 been a matter of notoriety.* 



It is probable that, before the introduction of the 

 rifle, a great number of hinds and young harts were 

 destroyed in proportion to the number of adult 

 harts killed ; and that then there would occasionally 

 be met with harts grey and toothless, and exhibit- 

 ing other symptoms of old age, which might natu- 

 rally give rise to the opinion of the extreme longe- 

 vity of deer. But now the rifleman selects his 

 victim, and the finest harts fall before him : it is 

 therefore scarcely possible for harts now to attain 

 even twenty years, whatever may be the natural 

 term of their existence. 



Besides that fewer hinds are shot, the full grown 

 ones are not so conspicuous in the herd as the 

 antlered harts, consequently they enjoy a compar- 

 ative immunity from the leaden death. Hinds 

 bearing every symptom of extreme age are occa- 

 sionally found in the Scottish forests. In November 

 1837, a hind was shot whose head and breast were 

 nearly white, and the rest of her body a mixed 

 brown and grey ; most of her teeth were decayed, 



* Mr. John Crerar, the veteran forester, upon whose authority the 

 account of this deer rests, for nearly three quarters of a century was 

 the constant companion on the hills of the many illustrious indivi- 

 duals who essayed their skill in deer-stalking, or witnessed the drives, 

 in the Forest of Atholl. His father served the three first Dukes of 

 Atholl, and had the honour of attending the chivalrous Prince Charlie 

 on a grouse-shooting excursion, on his march to the Lowlands in 1745. 

 Mr. John Crerar succeeded his father as forest-keeper in 1776. On 

 his attaining his 90th year, he was presented with a silver quaich by 

 the Members of the Curling Club at Dunkeld, in token of their ad- 

 miration of the skill and ardour he had displayed in all manly games. 

 He died on the 1st March 1840, in his 91st year. 



