THE RED DEER 
IRISH WILD RED DEER 
Length. 
Giro. 
Spread 
overall. 
Inside 
span. 
Points. 
Locality. 
Owner. 
Remarks and by whom measured. 
35 
4f 
- 
30 
9 
Ireland 
Hon. A. 
Gharteris 
(R. W.) 
34 
41 
— 
31J 
6x5 
Muckross 
Ralph Sneyd 
(Owner.) 
32 
5 
33 
— 
5X5 
Kenmare 
Lord 
Gastlerosse 
(Owner.) 
31 
4J 
20J 
— 
7X7 
Muckross 
Ralph Sneyd 
29 St. 10 lb. weight. (Owner.) 
31 
Si 
31 
— 
7X7 
Kenmare 
Lord 
Gastlerosse 
(Owner.) 
31 
5 
27 
7x8 
Kenmare 
Lord 
Gastlerosse 
(Owner.) 
There are probably several heads longer than any of the above, but 
so far they have not been recorded. Mr Rowland Ward in his “ Records 
of Big Game,” p. 7, sixth edition, includes Irish park deer with the in- 
digenous wild ones. I think this is a mistake, and scarcely consistent, 
since he separates English park deer from the wild ones. Wild Irish deer 
often reach great weights; a royal killed by Lord Gastlerosse, at Killarney, 
in 1908, weighed 28 st. 7 lb., clean. 
SCOTTISH WILD STAGS’ HEADS 
Some years ago, when writing a book on British deer horns, I made 
a point of visiting all the best public and private collections in these islands, 
especially in the north ; and nothing struck me so forcibly as the scarcity 
of heads killed in Scotland prior to the year 1850, and the general rarity 
of the much-vaunted trophies of days of yore. I doubt very much if, at the 
present day, there are thirty good examples of old Scottish heads. All 
this points to the fact that in the early part of the last century, and in 
previous ones, a stag’s head, however large or beautiful, was of no value 
either as an ornament or a sportsman’s trophy. The latter one can under- 
stand, because in early times the death of a stag was more often due to 
a collective rather than an individual effort, or the skill and staunchness 
of hounds. The artistic beauty, too, had not then appealed to the prosaic 
Highlanders, as it did to the more cultivated Italians, Austrians and 
Frenchmen, and so beautifully shaped horns were not kept, except to be 
sawn up for personal or table ornaments. In the past the majority of the 
specimens were in no way superior to the best trophies of to-day; but 
the following five examples are far ahead of anything killed since 1850. 
The two seventeen -pointers in Gordon Castle are easily the best British 
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