248 THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD 
into position when the first few hinds moved past a hundred yards below us. They were very 
uneasy and highly suspicious, but fortunately did not stop; and in another moment, to my joy, 
the big stag came slowly behind them, and offered a fair broadside in the very spot where I 
should have wished him to stand. The bullet took him through the ribs, certainly a trifle too 
far back, but he gave in at once, and rolled 150 yards down the hill, fortunately without hurt- 
ing his horns. A really fine Highland stag in his prime; weight, 16 stone 2 lbs., with a good 
wild head of ten points, and good cups on the top.” 
“Thursday, October 5th—We negotiated the stiff climb, and McLeish, leaving me behind 
a rock on the summit, returned some distance to signal directions to the pony-man. He came 
back just as the stag returned roaring down the pass he had ascended; and as the mist was 
blotting out the landscape, I feared he would come right on to us without being seen, but, as 
luck would have it, he stopped and recommenced bellowing within seventy yards. I never 
heard a stag make such a row, but nothing of him could we see. It was most exciting, lying 
flat on a slab of rock, hoping devoutly that the mist would rise, if only for a few seconds. 
The tension had grown extreme, when there was a momentary lift in the gloom, and I made 
out the dim forms of the deer just as a big hind, which I had not noticed, ‘bruached’ loudly 
within twenty yards of us. The outline of the stag was barely visible when, after carefully 
aiming, I pressed the trigger, knowing that a moment later there would be no second chance. 
At the shot the deer at once disappeared, but I felt sure I had hit him, and, on following the 
tracks for some fifty yards, there he lay as dead as a door-nail. Weight, 13 stone 6 lbs.; a 
wild head of ten points; thin, and evidently that of a deer on the decline.” 
In England the wild red deer are hunted with stag-hounds on Exmoor, and first-rate sport 
is obtained on the great moorlands of Somerset and Devon. Durine the last fifty years the 
deer have much increased in numbers, and no less than three packs—the Devon and* Somer- 
set, Sir John Heathcoat-Amory’s, and Mr. Peter Ormrod’s—are now engaged in hunting them. 
In the five years ending in 1892, 276 deer were killed by the Devon and Somerset hounds. 
Wild deer are much given to fighting during the mating season. This is evidenced by the 
number of pairs of dead deer formerly found with their antlers tightly interlocked. How- 
ever, deer often make playful tests of strength by pushing each other with their antlers, and 
in this way also such casualties may have occurred. 
The young of the red deer are in Europe usually dropped in June. The fawn is dexterously 
concealed by the hind amid the heather, and is left in concealment during the day. Scrope, 
a great authority on these animals, states that the hind induces her fawn to lie down by 
pressure of the nose: “It will never stir or lift up its head the whole of the day, unless you 
come right upon it, as I have often done; it lies like a dog, with its nose to its tail. The 
hind, however, although she often separates herself from the young fawn, does not lose sight of 
its welfare, but remains at a distance to windward, and goes to its succour in case of an attack 
of the wild cat or fox, or any other powerful vermin.” 
On the Continent far finer examples of red deer are to be found than in the British Isles, 
and the antlers and records of weights preserved at the Castle of Moritzburg in Saxony, and 
elsewhere, show that two hundred years ago the stags of Germany were far superior even to 
those of the present day, which are much heavier and afford finer trophies than do the 
Highland red deer. Even in Germany, however, marked deterioration has taken place during 
the last two centuries. A stag, for example, killed by the Elector of Saxony in 1646 weighed 
not less than 61 stone 11 lbs.; while from the Elector’s records between 1611 and 1656 it 
appears that 59 stags exceeded 56 stone, 651 exceeded 48 stone, 2,679 exceeded 40 stone, 
and 4,139 exceeded 32 stone. These figures are given by Mr. W. A. Baillie-Grohman, a 
distinguished sportsman, in a very interesting chapter contributed to the “Big Game Shooting” 
volumes of the Badminton Library. 
This deterioration among the red deer of the forests of Central and Northern Europe is, 
however, not traceable among the red deer of the wild mountainous regions of Austria-Hungary 
