28o STAGHUNTING WITH THE 



many a good head has been mounted in 

 the skin, but after a few years the ravages of 

 moths, as in the case of the great St. Audries 

 head, which has lately had to be reduced to the 

 frontal bones, are apt to destroy the handsome 

 coat which becomes the stag so well in his life- 

 time ; the ears go first, the fieck drops off 

 piecemeal, and then the skin yields by slow 

 degrees to the insidious attacks of time and 

 insects. The measurements of the above men- 

 tioned head, which claims first place amongst 

 wild trophies secured in the British Isles, have 

 been given in a previous chapter, but two years 

 later Mr. Sanders in his first season took two 

 very notable deer. The first of them was the 

 fourteen pointer described in the narrative of 

 the run of the 19th julv, i8()6 — a very early 

 date for a staghunt — and the second was a stag 

 with the extraordinarv spread of }H^ inches ; 

 from outside to inside at the fork. This stag 

 was roused in Redcleave after a meet at Winsford 

 Village, on the 23rd of August, and ran very 

 pluckily by way of Haddon to the Bittescombc 

 coverts, whence he was driven, after a rousing 

 fresh find in Sir John Ferguson Davie's lower 

 lake, to the railway embankment at Petton Chapel. 

 Passing this obstacle he presently stood at bay 

 in the muddv channel of the Lupley water, and 

 upon being handled proved to carrv a rounded 

 knob on one of his three points on the near 



