WESTWARD HO ! 41 



much to bring down the head of red deer on 

 Exmoor, and it was feared by many good sports- 

 men, Dr. Collyns amongst the number, that the 

 wild stag would soon be but a memory. And 

 indeed at the time that Dr. Collyns wrote such a 

 state of things did not appear at all unlikely. In 

 1855, hounds were only out twenty -five days 

 killing two stags and two hinds, and this seemed 

 about what there was to spare, and though they 

 never fell to so low an ebb as this again, in the 

 years in which Dr. Collyns was preparing his great 

 work for the press, viz. in 1861 and 1862, they 

 hunted little, and deer were scarce. In the former 

 year they were out twenty-eight times, killed four 

 stags and four hinds, and took and saved one hind 

 and one young male deer; whilst in 1862 they 

 hunted twenty -seven days, killed six stags, and 

 saved one stag and three hinds. During the 

 Mastership of Mr. Bisset, which lasted from 1855 

 to 1890 — a period of twenty-six years — the head 

 of deer gradually increased, and had Dr. Collyns 

 lived till Lord Ebrington took the horn, he would 

 have had his heart gladdened by a long season of 

 eighty-nine days, with a record of twenty-three 

 stags and fifty-seven hinds, as well as ten other 

 deer killed at the end of it. 



And now, four hundred years after we have 

 a record of the first Master of Staghounds who 

 hunted Exmoor exactly as Exmoor is hunted at 

 the present day, there is a larger head of deer on 

 the moor than there has been at any time during 

 the century. It shows how sporting a spirit 

 exists in the far West, and what good fellows are 

 the farmers of Devonshire and West Somerset, 

 that the century should go out with a better head 



