THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
it drops, disturbing the whole ground and perhaps crossing the march 
into the next forest. A slightly wounded beast, once scared, is generally 
lost for ever. In rough ground a wounded stag is often very difficult to 
find and to see, as it lies deep in some hole amongst the bracken or heather. 
In any circumstances it is always best to allow a certain time to elapse 
before following a wounded beast. Keep it in sight if you can, but if it goes 
into a wood, or vanishes in a glen, it is always best to give it two hours 
to lie and get stiff. In 1910, after many days of failing to get a shot, I got 
the veriest snapshot at the haunch of a big fourteen-pointer in a heavily- 
wooded forest of the Carpathians. The tracks showed I had hit but 
not broken his hind leg. As I was using a *375 cordite rifle, throwing a 
heavy bullet, I knew the wound, although only a flesh one, must be severe, 
so after following the trail a couple of hundred yards I sat down to con- 
sider the problem. Either I must send a runner to the lodge thirty miles 
away to fetch a dog, or I must wait two hours and track the beast myself. 
After allowing two hours to elapse I started. The line of the retreat of the 
deer was through beech and spruce forest and the ground covered with 
wet leaves on which spooring was fairly easy, so I decided to try and find 
the wounded one myself. It was a more difficult task than I had anticipated, 
for many open spaces, which the sun had reached and dried the leaves 
and rocks, intervened, but by going slowly and making circular “casts ’’ 
ahead when the spoor failed the local hunter and I made out the track 
until we “ sprung ’’ the deer out of a small thicket. After that the wounded 
animal luckily passed over very “ open “ forest and our progress was 
more rapid. At last I saw him going along with his head down, and got 
a shot as he appeared crossing an opening. He was hit again and stumbled 
off, but fell within a hundred yards, to rise no more. From the moment 
when we started the pursuit, the time occupied was over two hours, and 
no more interesting piece of hunting has ever fallen to my lot. My ex- 
perience of dogs is that if you take one out it is never used, and when none 
is within miles you are apt to make a bad or an unlucky shot at the “ hart 
of grease.” The novice will find it nearly impossible to keep his eye on 
a slightly wounded stag in a herd of others, but the stalker ought to know 
the injured one at once by some peculiarity. It is his business to recognize 
individuals, as it is a shepherd’s to know his sheep. As a matter of fact 
every stag is different from another, and if you know deer well yourself 
or ask a stalker for points of difference, he will always reply that so-and-so 
is the black, the yellow, the red, the mousy stag, or one with such and 
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