THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
Now to return to South Harris. The day after the seal hunt was devoted 
by my host and myself to a visit to the island of Taransay, where there was 
a small snipe bog. It lay right on the side of the village where the crofters 
and their children were constantly moving about, yet we hardly set foot 
on the marsh when up got a snipe. For an hour we beat slowly and killed 
thirty -three — a capital morning’s sport. The afternoon I devoted to 
skinning seals, and next morning drove seven miles to the stalker’s 
house, where I had breakfast, and then walked on to the Luskantyve beat 
of the deer forest. 
October 4 was a glorious day. Twenty -five miles to the south-west 
was the great island rock of Haskeir, and forty miles to seaward was 
St Kilda, looming grey out of the oily sea. A procession of waders, now 
fast making their way south, passed along the coast and made the scene 
at once interesting to the naturalist who could distinguish their varied 
calls. Ring plover, redshank, turnstone, dunling, a few knots, an occasional 
greenshank, a few whimbrel, and hundreds of curlews were always within 
sight or sound, whilst little flocks of “blue rocks ’’ dashed backwards and 
forwards in their flights to and from the feeding -grounds, or to caves 
where they dwelt. Eiders and red -breasted mergansers floated or dived 
off the rocks, whilst far up in the sky over our heads were a pair of ravens 
uttering their hoarse croaks. 
“ It’s a curious thing,’’ remarked McLeay, the stalker, observing the 
direction of my gaze, “ that I have never yet killed one of those old resi- 
dents. That and another pair of ravens live here all the year round, and I 
have not yet succeeded in shooting or poisoning one of them. They are much 
too cunning. Next month we shall have the ‘ travellers.’ They come in 
flocks from the north and I kill forty or fifty of them every winter. These 
Harris ravens are as sharp as a Glesgie lawyer.” Soon we turned inland and 
ascended by a gradual rise to ground that somewhat resembled a High- 
land forest. One large open corrie cut in the hill -side, and on the southern 
slope of this we found a shootable stag. He was only an eight -pointer, 
but perhaps as good as ever he would be, so we at once commenced to stalk. 
Hinds were very numerous on this beat, and we saw some before we 
left the coast feeding on the sea -kelp. To avoid various small herds of 
them we had to make a considerable detour, but after that the stalk was 
very easy and we got down to our stag, which I killed at eighty yards. 
It was some hours before we found more stags on one of the many ter- 
races facing the sea. Again the stalk presented no difficulties, and we got 
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