THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
a week, and then only after many miles of stony slopes and treacherous 
ice -braes have been surmounted, and sometimes not at all if the winds and 
the snow are persistently adverse. Reindeer hunting is no sport for the 
spoiled boy who wishes to reckon his success by the numbers killed, but is 
the ideal training for the would-be big -game hunter of the right sort who 
does not mind roughing it. Norwegian reindeer have been so consistently 
hunted for centuries that they are the wildest and most unsettled of Euro- 
pean big game and require, on the part of the man who would pursue them 
successfully, enduring patience, hard work and some degree of skill. In 
no other form of stalking that I have tried is it so necessary to employ 
“ dash ” as well as caution. You should never potter about and wait too 
long, for even feeding reindeer may be taken at any moment with one of 
their sudden panics, and the result is no shot for that day or, perhaps, for 
ever with that herd. It is essential to get in and obtain your shot, even if a 
long one, rather than to wait as one does with red deer until they get to 
some place where they are easily stalkable. The only occasion on which 
the stalker can wait and pick his stag is when he observes a herd lying 
down at midday; and then, if he is so lucky as to find them in some spot 
where the winds are not tricky, and that is very rare indeed, he may take 
his time. My first attempt to kill a good buck was not very successful, but 
as it is typical of reindeer hunting I will narrate it. I had taken what was 
said to be “ private *' ground, with a stone hut, high up in the Laerdal- 
Hallingdal mountains near the watershed above Breistol. It took me just 
three years to discover that the only difference between “ public ” and 
“ private ” hunting ground was about £50, for the local hunter cares 
nothing for any “ private ” claims, and hunts indiscriminately all places 
within range of the valley where he dwells. But there were reindeer in these 
mountains, for a walk on Sunday when I did not carry a rifle enabled me 
to find twelve fine bucks. They got my wind in a small corrie at about 4,000 
feet and ran up the opposite slope about 200 yards away. Such a sight did 
not occur again for three years. 
My stone hut leaked and let in all the snow that fell. It was very cold 
and uncomfortable, and the weather bad for all the first fortnight in Sep- 
tember, 1900, but I tramped the stony hills and plunged through the snow 
every day for ten or twenty miles in the hope of seeing a good stag. Nearly 
every day I saw reindeer, generally a few females and young. On Sep- 
tember 4 1 found fourteen reindeer in Scardal , and after a tremendous walk up 
Rank-a-botn, over the worst ground I have ever seen in Europe, they 
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