DEVON AND SOMERSET. 293 



invitations for a venison feast have been duly 

 sent out, hounds have failed to score a kill, and 

 the appointed date has come nearer and nearer^ 

 whereon park venison has been ordered in haste, 

 but it has generally come to pass that at the 

 eleventh hour a stag has been duly taken. 



When killed in the by-days at the end of 

 July, or in the sweltering weeks of August before 

 the velvet has begun to burnish, stag venison 

 proves sometimes very difficult to keep, even 

 for the few hours which are necessary for its 

 distribution and delivery to the many out of 

 the wav and more or less inaccessible hill country 

 farmsteads where its proper destiny lies. For 

 the master's object in the distribution of all 

 venison is to secure its safe arrival at the houses 

 of those long suffering tenant farmers whose 

 crops are always suffering more or less throughout 

 the farmer's year from the hungrv teeth of 

 one of the most cunning and active of all wild 

 animals. No ordinary fence is high enough or thick 

 enough or sufficiently close woven to prevent the 

 entrance of deer ; a barricade of laced boughs on 

 top of five feet of stone faced bank may give pause 

 to a hungry stag or hind, but where there is 

 a will with deer there is always a wav sooner 

 or later. The hinds and calves wriggle and 

 twist beneath the strong beech stretchers, forcing 

 their way with heads and necks until one slim 

 foreleg is followed by another and there is made 



