RED DEER HUNTING IN GALICIAN FORESTS 
year, when the stags called well the whole season, was thirty -seven. The 
winter of 1909 was the worst experienced in the forest, and from this 
the stock has not yet recovered. Fifteen hundred deer were found dead, of 
which 600 were stags, mostly immature. 
A Highland stalker might lift his eyebrows with scorn or surprise 
that nine experienced rifles killed only seven stags in the season 1909,* 
but then he does not understand the conditions of sport and its difficulties; 
but when you have experienced them yourself you will regard hunting 
in Galicia at a much higher level than that in any Scottish forest. Think, 
too, of the chance — and there always is a good chance — of killing a stag 
with a head almost as good as a wapiti. In nearly every beat you visit 
there is such a stag, carrying from fifteen to twenty points. You will hear 
him roaring and probably stalk him several times; and one day the wind 
will blow a little differently or the stag may make a false move, and he 
is yours. Then you will have something worth remembering and looking 
at upon your walls for the rest of your life. 
Prince Henry had been so kind as to invite me to Tartarow in 1908, 
but I was away in Alaska hunting other beasts, and so could not go. But 
in 1909 he again repeated his invitation and I was delighted to accept. 
After a flying visit to Berlin, where I had some work to do in the museum 
and zoological gardens, I arrived in Vienna on September 12. 
Having once seen Vienna, it is a matter of surprise that more English 
travellers do not visit this queen of cities. I have never seen anything to 
compare with it. The magnificence of its streets, all laid out with a sump- 
tuousness and good taste that call for constant admiration — the artistic 
grandeur of the cathedral, the arches of the Kolchmarket, the Emperor’s 
Palace, the Swartzenburg, and, most of all, the perfect Belvedere Palace, 
are more worth seeing than anything in England or France. Everything in 
Vienna seems to have been done on the grand scale, and her architects and 
past Emperors were men of noble minds, whose one consideration was 
to make their city beautiful. Wealth and taste here are happily married, 
and the result is a never-failing joy to the artistic. In this flying visit to the 
city not the least interesting experience of my brief stay was a visit to 
the Liechtenstein Gallery, under the guidance of Prince Franz, who knew 
all the pictures and evidently loved them. This gallery is said to be the 
finest private collection of pictures in Europe, and as the work of certain 
* Count G. Hoyos, one of the most experienced sportsmen in Europe, only killed one stag in an adjoining forest 
in 1909. 
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