76 MY SPORTING HOLIDAYS 



corries, and of the wide -stretching slopes of the moor- 

 land forest beyond it, where five-and-twenty years 

 ago, in company with Sandy the stalker and John the 

 gillie, it was my fortune to enjoy with all the zest of 

 youth my first experience of shooting the wild red- 

 deer of Scotland. 



This experience has since been repeated on other 

 moors and forests, and, so far as I have got, I have 

 never found lit pall. In some sense it is true that 

 Scotch red-deer are not now actually wild game in the 

 full meaning of the term. Park stags have occasion- 

 ally been imported to improve the stock and enlarge 

 the heads. There are wire fences here and there, and 

 deer are sometimes hay-fed in winter. No doubt all 

 these things introduce, in theory, an artificial element 

 of sorts, which, again in theory, should detract from 

 the wild nature of the sport of deer- stalking. But as 

 a matter of practice, and particularly in the wilder 

 forests of Scotland, where Nature's steep hills and 

 corries, her wild glens and open moor 



' Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, 

 Land of the mountain and the flood ' 



cannot be seriously interfered with by the hand of 

 man, the sport is real and natural enough, and also 

 arduous enough to satisfy most, if not all, of those 

 to whom wild sport appeals. The powder must be 

 ' straight,' the leg- sinews must be hard and strong, and 

 the nervous systems of those who undertake it must 

 be fairly sound and healthy, if successful results are to 

 be obtained. There is also the discipline of occasional 

 mischance and failure to undergo. 



In 1889 I paid a visit to a shooting friend, 

 E. Baldwin, who was then the tenant of the Forest of 



