278 SPORT AND TRAVEL PAPERS 



any sporting instinct would dream of firing at any stag not 

 carrying a first-class head and worth preserving as a trophy; 

 such a one, indeed, is but rarely seen, and the stalker prefers 

 therefore not to shoot at all, losing thus a great deal of fun. 

 Our camp was pitched close to a creek Cape in a narrow 

 valley with very steep sides leading to high mountains at a spot 

 beyond which horses were not able to go. The tents stood on a 

 high bank above the mountain stream and were hidden in thick 

 bush and under high trees, chiefly remo, plentifully adorned with 

 "supple jacks" in as damp a place as could well have been 

 chosen ; no sun did penetrate there, no wind to dry the ground. 

 My only companion was the guide, a Tyrolese by birth, but long 

 resident in the country, a born mountaineer, untiring, always on 

 the move and as keen a hunter for himself as ever lived. He 

 and his partner, now in camp some distance away, had hunted 

 in these parts for several years and shot most of the magnificent 

 heads which adorn the walls of so many houses in the colony. 

 These grand trophies fetch big prices, and there may thus 

 perhaps be some excuse for a guide's jealousy of any one who 

 secures a really good head, also, it may be, for not doing all in 

 his power towards finding such a one for others. The first red 

 deer, a stag and two hinds, arrived in New Zealand from 

 Windsor Park in 1862 ; they were Scottish, crossed with 

 Hungarian blood, and now they are in their thousands in 

 various parts of the colony. Thanks to the foreign strain, and 

 probably also to the limestone formation of their adopted 

 country, the antlers are very heavy and nearly all carry a 

 heavy crown. Many people, and those men who ought to know, 

 assert that the heads are falling off in size and that they are not 

 now what they were some years ago ; nor that any of those 

 extraordinary heavy antlers bristling with points of former days 

 are ever got. To judge from recent specimens and from those 

 shot years ago, this apparently is so, and two reasons for it are 

 given, firstly, that the corameca scrub, of which deer are very 

 fond, and which is supposed to greatly help the antler's growth, 

 is becoming very scarce in the mountains; the second and 

 probably the more probable cause is that owing to the too early 

 opening of the shooting season before the stags have really 

 begun to rut the big fellows, frightened by the many shots 

 fired at deer and pigs, never come out of the dense bush at all to 



