100 DEER-STALKING. 



we quicken our crawl. With my left hand T pull 

 myself to a hillock, off which I mean to shoot, but on 

 raising my head gently, find the whole herd alarmed, 

 and standing in a thick cluster, and the stag is head on 

 to me. My eyes are full of dust and perspiration ; as I 

 push the rifle forward there is clearly not a second to 

 be lost. Suddenly they wheel; the stag comes broad- 

 side to me and pauses ; another moment, and it seems 

 certain they will all be off, so I, like a duffer, hurry my 

 aim and miss handsomely, and so quickly do they turn 

 and crowd together that there is no time to fire the 

 second barrel. Annoying enough after all the toil we 

 had taken, as it only wanted a kill to make this the 

 most brilliant and exciting bit of stalking I had ever 

 seen. Complimenting John on his part of the business, 

 and doing very much the reverse to my share, we took 

 a cup of water and started off again. After tramping 

 some distance, we found five stags and a few hinds in a 

 small corrie. Making a short and easy stalk, we were 

 soon \vithin range, and a nice nine-pointer bit the dust 

 to the first barrel, the only shootable stag amongst the 

 lot. 



I took my lunch while the gralloch went on, and 

 that finished we were on the tramp again, quickly find- 

 ing a lot of very heavy stags. We commenced to stalk 

 them on a side wind, and whether we sailed too near to 

 the wind, or whether a grouse we put up disturbed 

 them this deponent sayeth not. It was probably the 

 latter, but off they all galloped along the side of a very 

 big round hill. Directly they were out of sight John 

 jumped up and went off full tilt, saying he felt sure of 



