THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
breeding season. The hybrids resulting from this can then be turned out 
with safety with their mothers in the following spring and a fresh lot of 
hinds captured before the next autumn. 
No doubt there are still a few sportsmen and Highland proprietors 
who object to these “ horrible innovations,” and wish to save the pure 
old Highland stock from the experiments of the Sassenach; but the grand 
old Highland stag only exists to-day in a very few places, except in a miser- 
able and deteriorated condition, in such a form, indeed, that we should 
scarcely care to preserve him. Therefore it is hardly necessary to per- 
petuate in its purity a poor creature which is the product of neglect, over- 
crowding and man’s greed. Most stalkers do not care in the least whether 
the stag with good horns which they have just shot, and are intensely 
proud of, is a first, second, fourth or fifth cross of a Warnham Park stag, 
which it probably is. 
When we see that curious malformed head, known as ‘‘ Lord Burton’s 
twenty -pointer,” and which I believe to be a pure Park stag presented 
to Glenquoich by the late Lord Ilchester, taken as the representative 
champion Highland head, it only goes to prove how easily deer stalkers 
can be misled, and how very little trouble they take to ascertain true facts 
relating to natural history. 
There is nothing easier than to invent a story about some head and 
after this tale has passed through the hands of a few journalists even its 
original creator might be staggered. 
One day, in Perth, I met an old Highland acquaintance, and he said to 
me, ” I have been reading that book of deer horns of yours, and it is a 
curious thing that you have neither mentioned nor figured the finest 
purely Highland head there is; it is known as the ‘ Braemar head,’ and is 
forty -two inches long and forty inches wide. A head of perfect size and 
shape.” I was, of course, at once interested in this giant and asked where 
it could be seen. 
” That is easy,” he replied, ” for if you will come to my house next 
Sunday, I will show it to you.” 
The following Sunday found me looking at the great head, whose history 
I listened to with close attention. 
‘‘ I had heard several yarns,” said my host, ‘‘ from the stalkers in the 
forest of X of a marvellous stag, the greatest ever killed in the district, 
which was shot by one Archie Macdonald, a famous character and poacher 
who dwelt in the village of Banchory, at the beginning of the last century. 
32 
