RED DEER HUNTING IN GALICIAN FORESTS 
Then he proceeded to fill his exceedingly odoriferous hat with water and 
invited me to drink and then he offered me some of the vilest tobacco on 
earth, dug up, nip by nip, from the gloomy recesses of his dirty trousers 
pocket. All these strange presents a man accepts with pleasure from his 
hunter, for “ thoughts are singing swallows ” on the day he kills a stag, 
and it is a source of joy to others as well as himself. 
There being no other calling stags on Malo-Zelonica, we moved on to 
Blazow in the afternoon, another high and beautiful beat, where several 
fine harts dwelt in gloomy silence. After the evening and morning hunt I 
rode amidst splendid beech forests to the main valley, where, after a dis- 
tance of sixteen miles, I reached Tartarow, to find all the guests departed. 
My kind host, however, insisted that I should try yet another place beyond 
Wononienka, where two very fine stags were said to dwell. So again 
packing up and travelling by the main line railway and horseback for some 
twenty-five miles, I reached a hut on the lower slopes of the mountains 
known as Magura. Here my new hunter was an old ex -poacher known as 
Nicolo Zaftchuk, a grizzled old fellow, said to be the hardest man and 
the best stalker in the whole of the Carpathians. “ He almost runs uphill 
when he hears a stag on the roar, and you must needs follow briskly,” 
said the Prince, “ or he will despise you ” — a description of the old ruffian’s 
character that was literally true. I found no difficulty in following him 
even when he raced uphill through dense and dripping raspberry groves 
or down shining hillsides dank with rotting vegetation; but he was a hard 
taskmaster, and I had to do my best to win his respect. In fact, my four 
days with Nicolo were distinctly' strenuous. Every night a stag roared 
magnificently in the forest beneath us and worked out in the great open 
fields of raspberry bushes, seven feet high, by daybreak. Each morning, after 
at least two hours’ wait in the darkness, with its subsequent fight through 
the canes, we got within 100 yards of our stag, and then, just as it was 
light enough to see the sights, the same old drama of disappointed hopes 
was enacted. On two occasions I feel sure the stag never even suspected 
our presence, but, knowing that danger was most to be apprehended in 
the moments of dawn, he drew his hinds together and dashed off back to 
the forest in silence without our even knowing he had gone. It was most 
exasperating, just when victory seemed assured. A man must indeed 
have an equable temper to persevere at this form of sport. Were it not so 
high-class it would break your heart. I must not strain my readers’ 
patience too far by narrating our repeated failures. Every device that the 
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