54 MY SPORTING HOLIDAYS 



must be carefully taken into account ere plans are 

 laid and carried out. The rifles are placed in passes 

 or between lakes, and it is often no easy task to get 

 them to their posts without moving deer back into the 

 beat and so spoiling everything. Generally speaking, 

 deer-driving requires careful planning, good general- 

 ship, and experienced execution ; even then, unless 

 luck be with you, the best-laid plans may all go 

 wrong. A woodland stag is one of the most cunning 

 and artful animals alive. He cannot be driven by 

 noise, and frequently breaks back past the drivers, 

 apparently warned by some mysterious instinct of a 

 hidden danger in front. But if all is well arranged, 

 and luck be with you, a master stag or two may trot 

 or gallop through the trees disturbed, but generally 

 not seen by the men, past a rifle. 



The opportunity thus given for a shot is occasionally 

 easy, but more often difficult. Buck fever, no doubt, 

 is a disturbing element. I defy any true son of 

 Nimrod who has experienced those sensations to 

 forget the pleasurable excitement, the quickened 

 heart-beat, that he felt at the approach of a warrant- 

 able Hitteren stag. He has sat, perchance, one fine 

 September morning and a fine day in the Thrond- 

 hjem Amt is worth living for on some well-chosen 

 bunch of heather amid a grove of pine. The mur- 

 muring trickle of the burn, the ripple of the lake 

 on either hand, the mysterious gentle noises of a 

 forest, are all around him, and sound like music in 

 his ears. The brilliantly enhanced colouring of dark 

 green pine, of purple heather, blue lake, and yellow 

 marsh, lit up by a northern sun, and spread out before 

 him like a picture, is a pleasure to behold. From 

 half a mile in front of him runs back a well-known 



