THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
and pate de foie gras play a prominent part, than some simple outing for 
the sake of sport. Nowadays there is a tendency to overdo anything that is 
good in sport, and from this evil West of England deer -hunting is now 
not wholly free. Still, the local people, who know their ground and run 
“ cunning,” still see the best of the game, and rather favour the hunts 
late in the season, when the crowd has gone and the hinds run straight. 
In 1871 the Western herd was estimated to number 250 head, but of late 
years the deer have increased so rapidly that, besides the original pack, 
two others have been formed to keep them in check. In 1905 the late 
master, Mr R. A. Sanders, told me that the number would be about 500, 
but there must be an increase of quite 200 since that date, as I was informed 
on a visit to the district in 1912. 
Mr Greswell has told us that the notices of early Saxon hunting round 
Somerton, Cheddar (Coeddir), Taunton, and North and South Petherton 
are more voluminous than they are elsewhere. King Alfred constantly 
hunted from Newton Court, and in the forest and park of North Petherton. 
At this time there were no fewer than five royal and ancient forests in 
Somersetshire — namely, Selwood or Frome Forest, Mendip Forest, 
the forest of Neroche to the south of the Quantocks, and about eight miles 
beyond Taunton, Exmoor, with an extent of twenty thousand acres of 
heather, coombe, and moorland, and the royal park and forest of North 
Petherton, situated south of the Quantocks along the alluvial valley of the 
Parret. The country has changed less during the succeeding ages than 
perhaps any other part of fertile England. The greater part is still uncul- 
tivated moorland, surrounded by shaggy woods with deep coombes, and it 
is as attractive to-day to deer as when King John hunted there and flew 
his gerfalcons at the cranes that lived on its marshy wastes. 
In summer the red deer, especially the stags in velvet, are often seen on the 
open moors, but the bulk of the deer shelter in the woods and wood edges, 
working out at night to feed. They range from Bridgewater to Ilfracombe, 
and from Ilfracombe to Exeter. Taking Dulverton as a centre, their dis- 
tribution roughly extends twenty-five miles to the east, west and north. 
Recently they have crossed the main valley of the Taunton Vale, and are 
now to be found in some numbers in the woods to the west of the Blagdon 
Hills. I saw tracks of deer in the woods below the Wellington Monument 
in August, 1912, and was informed that they range now as far south as 
Tiverton. Their favourite resorts are the Quantock Hills, the woods 
adjoining the rivers Exe, Haddon and Barle, and the woods of St Audries, 
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