IN SCOTCH DEER-FORESTS 71 



hours we could find no deer. Every accustomed nook 

 and cranny on the east side of Ben Loyal had been 

 closely spied on that occasion to no purpose, and we 

 were making our way round a steep rocky shoulder, 

 with thoughts intent on lunch at a neighbouring 

 spring. Sandy was ahead with the rifle, and John 

 the gillie was a few yards behind me. Casually 

 looking down the steep hillside beneath us, I saw a 

 patch of red-brown colour among a wilderness of 

 rocks, not 150 yards away ; looked again, and made 

 out a good stag lying fast asleep in his mid-day couch. 

 Neither of the men had seen him, simply because he 

 was lying in an unaccustomed spot. Before I could 

 lay hand on rifle, he was up and away, but I managed 

 to wound him before he vanished round the shoulder 

 of the hill. 



There is no more unsatisfactory business than 

 hunting a wounded deer, especially without a dog. 

 This particular animal disappeared as completely as if 

 the earth had swallowed him up, though we could spy, 

 as we thought, every yard of the ground beneath us 

 from a little further up the hill. 



Three days after I killed this same stag within a 

 quarter of a mile of the spot where I had wounded 

 him. It turned out that he had doubled on his tracks 

 directly he was out of our sight in a small hollow 

 below, had rounded the shoulder behind us, and then 

 lain down in a corrie we had just left, and where we 

 subsequently found and shot him. 



I have spoken of the thick birch -woods of Ben 

 Loyal. In addition to these, and stretching for a mile 

 or more along the sea-coast west of the lodge, and 

 then running up into a point towards the moorland, 

 where it terminated in a little isolated thickly- wooded 



