ROE-HUNTING. 63 



There was no dispute about the lurking-place of the 

 wounded roe. Without a word we at once began the search, 

 and found him at the very spot we anticipated. He was 

 standing sideways at seventy yards from my feet, when I 

 fired and dropped him on his side. He rose, and struggling 

 down the steep, was quickly pulled down by my favourite 

 retriever. 



The dusk was now merging into darkness, the chase having 

 lasted from high noon till past five o'clock. Weary and 

 hungry, with a heavy roe slung upon each of our shoulders, 

 and a long, rough, dark journey home, I will nevertheless 

 make bold to assert that a more " heartsome " or a merrier one 

 never was taken. 



After the many splendid roe-hunts I have followed, both 

 in former and in later years, it is my firm conviction that 

 gun-fanciers can only undervalue this sport from lack of 

 knowledge. No doubt deer-stalking is both interesting and 

 exciting to a tyro even from the first. He has the whole 

 open panorama spread before him, and a sort of hazy, mystified 

 conception of the plan of operations. Above all, he is en- 

 couraged by the stalker (in whose hands he is a mere puppet) 

 with the probability, nay, almost certainty, of a fair rifle-shot 

 at a noble hart. Very different is the pursuit of the roe. 

 The shooter is, or ought to be, left to his own unaided powers, 

 and many a blunder will he perpetrate, and many a hard day's 

 work undergo, before he acquires the skill to warrant success. 

 Confidence, of course, grows in proportion to the skill ; but 

 many sportsmen give up heart ere they have gained either, and 

 naturally stigmatise " the following of the roe " as " dull 

 work," and point perhaps to the few wretched specimens they 

 have slain out of season as evidences that roes are equally 

 unsatisfactory both when hunted and on the table. 



I have been assured by a Fife proprietor that roes are 

 migratory in the border counties. They come down, he said, 

 from the Highlands in numbers during severe weather, return- 



