366 STAGHUNTING WITH THE 



To blanch a stag is sometimes quite easy 

 and at other times the whole field cannot do 

 it, try they as manfully as they may, but the 

 general rule seems to be, that when once a 

 stag of warrantable age has made up his mind 

 to strike out for a distant point, no amount of 

 heading off will keep him from it, and again, if 

 once confronted and turned back into a big 

 woodland, he will be very chary of leaving it 

 unless the whole hillside be left quite unoccupied 

 and he be hard pressed by hounds within 

 the covert. As with scent, however, rules 

 cannot well be laid down for the behaviour 

 of deer, the unexpected always happening. 

 There seems to be a deep rooted conviction 

 in the public mind that deer always take the 

 same line from the same coverts, and when 

 crossing any particular hill can be depended 

 upon to make the same points. When deer 

 were very scarce, and in the days when Mr. 

 Bisset was restoring the sport and putting it 

 on the footing from whence the present flourishing 

 state of things has come, it mav have been 

 that stags roused in Horner always ran to 

 Porlock Weir, or Sweetery deer invariably made 

 for Badgworthv, but many stags have many 

 minds, and for one that now leads the pack 

 exactly where he is expected to, half a dozen 

 strike out a course of their own. This is, of 

 course, as it should be, for a great part of the 



