ROE-HUNTINO. 51 



I am fully aware that most sportsmen and housekeepers 

 will meet this assertion with a shake of the head ; but I am 

 prepared to prove that every season I rented Glenfalloch I 

 shot several roe-deer as fat as good mutton ; and in January 

 1861, the first year of my lease, my son and I killed three 

 bucks within a few days whose kidneys were loaded with fat. 

 Several people came on purpose to satisfy their curiosity as 

 to the condition of those bucks, and all agreed that if they 

 were not " in pride of grease," no deer ever could be. 



Some people insist upon larding roe-deer venison with beef 

 or mutton fat, while others assert that the only way to make 

 roe-flesh tolerable is to stew it. When a roe is out of condi- 

 tion, stewing and larding may disguise it as food, just as the 

 French cook, by the help of condiments, made his master eat 

 his old slippers ; but people who would so treat a roe-haunch 

 in prime order deserve never to have an opportunity of 

 spoiling one again. 



The condition of roes is far more precarious than that of 

 either red or fallow deer. In some seasons very few good 

 ones are killed at all. Some localities, too, seem much more 

 adapted to fatten them than others. During a lease of three 

 years at Glenfalloch, we killed 31 roe-deer, and of that num- 

 ber 12 were in first-rate condition. The last year of a former 

 lease in Aberdeenshire, I killed 19 roes, and my son 5, but 

 the best of these 24 did not equal the worst of the Glenfal- 

 loch dozen. What is stranger still, during the year that we 

 killed most fat ones at Glenfalloch, my brother complained 

 that out of a number killed by them, only 20 miles distant, 

 there was not one really good roe. 



Why the Glenfalloch roes were fatter than those on any of 

 my other rented shootings I never could discover; but if 

 even there, and at the height of the season, good ones were so 

 rare, no wonder that the majority of sportsmen and house- 

 keepers have branded roe-venison with the ill name that has 

 hanged so many dogs. The haunches of all our prime roes 



