THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
and a bear, not to speak of such small fry as gazelle, roe and pig. The 
sheep ground has already been noticed. Ibex, with, I think, heavier horns 
than are found on the dry ranges, live among the crags ; deer, pig, tiger, and 
roe frequent the forests, gazelle the plains below. The country is no doubt 
peculiarly favoured, as the nomad tribes that live in these parts are too 
intent on their own feuds to do much hunting, for the country is on the 
march between Turkoman and Kurd, amiable people that shoot one 
another at sight. 
The maral stag, after the manner of his kind, frequents the deep 
forests. The proper season to shoot him is, of course, the rutting time, 
which begins about the first of September. Local shikaris also recommend 
the early spring, before the horns have been dropped. At these seasons the 
stag may be found early in the morning and in the evening on his feeding 
grounds, the open glades, or the bare slopes of the range. As the latter 
are very often covered by a thick growth of thorn, the animals are often 
as hard to find in this as in the real forest. Occasionally a stag may be 
seen crossing the open down-like “ sheep ” ground, as they go from one 
forest to another, but though one may hope for, one can hardly expect such 
luck as this. During the day the deer remain secluded in thick forest, and 
the only plan is to try what in America is called “ still -hunting.” 
Roaring seems to go on intermittently as late as the first week in October, 
and often, when it seems to have stopped altogether, a spell of colder weather, 
with rain from the Caspian, may bring it on again. The local people use 
a hollow bit of ibex horn ( gaokul ) to call the stags when they are roaring, 
and with it make a passable imitation of the noise, which is a curious 
mixture between the roar of a Scottish stag and the mooing of the domestic 
ox. The old man I saw using this instrument once only succeeded in 
getting a stag to answer him, but possibly his failures were due to its 
being too late in the season. In the writer’s experience a stag rarely roared 
often enough to make it possible to follow and shoot him in the forest, 
particularly as at this season they always seemed to be on the move. 
The roaring, therefore, save for giving one the satisfactory assurance that 
a stag was there, was of little real help. The presence of deer — more often, 
I should say, their late presence — may sometimes be detected by a sweet 
bovine and quite unmistakable scent. Whenever my shikari got a whiff 
of this he used to get to leeward and take extraordinary pains in working 
up wind, evidently hoping to come on the deer. We were never successful 
in this curious proceeding. 
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