Nature and Art, November 1, 1806.] 
NOTES ON THE RED DEER. 
179 
hunting'. I was then a young man and was present on 
that occasion. Tivo thousand Highlanders, or wild Scots 
as you call them here, were employed to drive to the 
hunting ground all the deer from the woods and hills of 
Atholl, Banedoch, Marr, Murray, and other counties about. 
As these Highlanders use a very light dress, and are very 
swift of foot, they went up and down so nimbly, that in 
tivo months they brought together two thousand Red Deer, 
besides Roes and Fallow Deer. The Queen, the great men, 
and others were in a glen when all these deer were brought 
forward before them. Believe me, the whole body moved 
forward in something like battle order. The sight still 
strikes me, for they had a leader whom they followed close 
wherever he moved. 
“ This leader was a very fine stag, with a very high head. 
This sight highly delighted the Queen, but she soon had 
cause to fear upon the Earl addressing her thus : ‘ Do you 
observe that stag who is foremost in the herd ? There is 
danger from that stag ; for if either feare or rage should 
drive him from the ridge of that hill, let every one look 
for himself, for none of us will be out of the way of harm, 
for the rest will follow this one, and having thrown us 
under foot, they will open a passage to the hill behind us.’ 
What happened a moment after confirmed this opinion, for 
the Queen ordered one of the dogs to be let loose on one 
of the deer ; this the dog pursues, the leading deer was 
frightened, he flies by the way he had come there, the rest 
fly after him, and break out where the thickest body of the 
Highlanders was ; they had nothing for it but to lay them- 
selves flat on the ground, and allow the deer to pass over 
them. It was told the Queen that several of the High- 
landers were wounded, and two or three of them killed 
outright. The whole body had got clean off, had not the 
Highlanders fallen on a stratagem to cut off the rear from 
the main body. It was of those that had been separated, 
that the Queen’s dogs and those of the nobility made 
slaughter. 
“ There were killed that day tlwee hundred and sixty-five 
deer, five wolves, * and some roes.” 
We have italicized some of the above remarks 
to show the scale on which these huntings were 
conducted in the olden time, and the time devoted 
to them. 
The numbers of deer appear to have been fre- 
quently thinned by disease. It is now a well-known 
fact that animals in a state of Nature frequently 
suffer from epidemic diseases, as much as those in 
confinement, the effects being more noticeable in 
countries where, as in England even in the Norman 
days, the larger carnivora have been exterminated. 
In some of the old chartularies of the Royal Forests, 
we find the right of hunting granted to certain 
individuals on condition of their hanging on trees, 
out of reach of the hounds, all carcases of deer dead 
of the murrain. 
White, of Selborne, writing eighty years ago, thus 
describes the Forest of Wolmer (near Aldershott), • 
the deer in which, at the beginning of the seven- 
teenth centuxy, were, he says, over 500 head in 
number. 
“There is an old gamekeeper now (1778) alive, whose 
great-grandfather’s grandfather, father and self, have held 
the keepership for more than a century. This person 
assures me that Ms father has often told him that Queen 
Anne, as she was journeying along the Portsmouth road, 
did not think the Forest of Wolmer beneath her royal 
regard. For she came out of the great road at Lippock, 
* A few years after this we read of great ravages being 
committed by wolves in Scotland (1577). The last wolf 
was killed in England temp. Edward I., and in Scotland in 
1685. 
which is just by, and reposing herself on a bank smoothed 
for that purpose, about half a mile distant from Wolmer 
Pond, and still called the Queen’s bank, saw with great 
complacency the whole herd of Red Deer brought by the 
keepers along the vale before her, consisting of about five 
hundred head. ‘But,’ he adds, ‘by means of the Waltham 
blacks, as the deer poachers are termed,’ or, to use his own 
expression, ‘ when they began blacking,’ they were reduced 
to fifty head, and so continued decreasing until the time of 
the late Duke of Cumberland. It is now more than thirty 
years ago that his Highness sent down an huntsman and 
six yeomen prickers, in scarlet jackets, laced with gold, 
attended by the stag hounds, ordering them to take every 
deer in this forest alive, and convey them to Windsor. In 
the course of the summer they caught every stag, some of 
which showed extraordinary diversion ; but in the following 
winter, when the hinds were also carried off, such fine 
chases were exhibited as served the country for matter of 
talk and wonder for years afterwards. I saw, myself, one 
of the yeomen prickers single out a stag from the herd, and 
must confess it was the most curious feat of activity I ever 
beheld out of Mr. Astley’s riding-school. The exertions 
made by the horse and rider much exceeded all my expecta- 
tions, though the former excelled the latter in speed.” 
The large herds of deer, he adds, if they did 
much harm to the neighbouring crops, did far more 
to the morals of the inhabitants of the district, by 
the temptations they presented to poaching. The 
excesses of these Waltham blacks, as the poachers 
were termed, led to the passing of the Black Act, 
by which deer, sheep, horse-stealing, and innumer- 
able petty pilferings, were declared capital crimes. 
Windsor Forest, which extended over seventeen 
parishes, was disafforested in 1814, and was the 
scene of a royal hunting on a large scale ; a part of 
the Life Guards were turned out to assist in driving 
the deer, of which several hundreds were collected, 
and many more destroyed by the country people, 
who had conceived the idea that when the act 
received the royal assent, the deer became public 
property. 
We have already referred to the small portion of 
Exmoor on which these animals still exist. What 
the state of the adjoining parishes may be now, we 
know not ; but, twenty years ago, the sheep-stealing 
and poaching proclivities of the natives fully bore 
out Mr. White’s strictures. Stag hunting appears 
to have been regularly practised here, with a few 
trifling interruptions, since the days of Elizabeth. 
Stag - or hart hunting commences in early summer, 
and continues until October. Hind hunting then 
takes its place, continues until Christmas, recom- 
mences at Ladv-day, and continues until 1 0th May ; 
the cessation during winter being chiefly on account 
of the animal’s habit of “ soiling,” entailing so much 
water work on the hounds, with its accompanying 
evil, severe attacks of canine rheumatism. These 
deer show the aversion to sheep which is peculiar 
to all the deer tribe. It is curious that there seems 
to be a strong resemblance between the scent of 
these animals and that of the small Exmoor sheep, 
probably arising from the similarity of their food. 
Worrying sheep has always been a vice, and, as is 
generally the case with dogs addicted to it, is a 
perfectly incurable one in the Devon staghounds. 
What the number of the deer may now be we 
cannot state. Mr. Collyns, of Dulverton, in his 
amusing work, “ The Chase of the Red Deer in 
n 2 
