CHAPTER XV 
SIERRA MORENA (Continued) 
RED DEER AND BOAR 
THE mountain deer of the Sierra Moréna are the grandest of their 
kind in Spain, and will compare favourably with any truly wild 
deer in Europe.’ The drawings, photographs, and measurements 
given in this chapter prove so much, but no mere numerals 
convey an adequate conception of these magnificent harts, as 
seen in the full glory of life bounding in unequal leaps over 
some rocky pass, or picking more deliberate course up a stone 
stairway. 
Massive as they are in body (weighing, say, 300 lbs. clean), 
yet even so the giant antlers appear almost disproportionate in 
length and superstructure. 
The whole Sierra Moréna being clad with brushwood and 
jungle, thicker in places, but nowhere clear, shooting is practically 
confined to “ driving” on that extensive scale termed, in Spanish 
phrase, monteria. 
Before describing two or three typical experiences of our 
own in this sierra, we attempt a sketch of the system of the 
monterta as practised throughout Spain. 
The area of operations being immense and clad with almost 
continuous thicket, it is customary to employ two or three 
separate packs (termed rehdles, or recdbas), counting in all as 
many as seventy or eighty hounds. The extra packs—beyond 
that belonging to the host—are brought by shooting guests, and 
each pack has its own huntsman (perréro), whom alone his own 
1 We exclude from consideration all deer that are winter-fed or otherwise assisted, and of 
course all that have been “improved” by crosses with extraneous blood. These mountain 
deer of Spain are true native aborigines, unaltered and living the same wild life as they lived 
here in Roman days and in ages before. 
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