DEER loi 



seasons, and made them stop out so often that Davis used 

 to put an extra guinea in his pocket whenever lie was 

 hunted. 



Davis, much as he enjoyed and reverenced fox-hunting, 

 was, as it were, cradled in stag-hunting. Thus, as we 

 have seen, a fine perception of the ways and habits of deer 

 had grown with his growth. Dr. Croft tells me that his 

 deer were nearly always taken without injury. Season after 

 season found the old names in the Swinley paddocks. ' The 

 science of stag-hunting,' a friend of long experience writes to 

 me, ' lies in the management of the deer : the rest is a matter 

 of a bold, fast horse and an adhesive buckskin.' At all events, 

 everything depends upon the old deer, the deer who know their 

 points and have learned how to take care of themselves. Thus 

 a man may be a good huntsman with foxhounds, and fail 

 from his very qualities as a huntsman of staghounds. An 

 apologist of the last century — for hunting the carted deer has 

 always had its Strattons and its Bowen Mays— puts it in this 

 way : ' Here our chase differs from every other of the field, 

 and proves itself worthy of the title Boyal, for as it is the 

 sport of majesty, it is also strictly the seat of mercy ; for in all 

 other sports of the field, as each individual considers himself 

 the hero of the day for being first in at the death, here the 

 arduous determined struggle is who can most exceed in his 

 exertions to save life.' 



Thus, one of the most difficult things for persons in 

 authority out stag-hunting is to know when to stop hounds 

 and when to press a deer. Some deer, as I have said, go 

 away with a bang, make up their minds and yours m the 

 first field, and prosecute their point with the determination 

 of a Deccan boar ; but I have known deer which have given 

 us capital runs make very poor starts. The weather or some 

 accident or caprice may have something to do with it, but 

 there are good sulky deer just as there are good sulky race- 



