1 
Red Deer 
49 
1 
He stated how he had been dragged across the river, and then with a fearful sigh said, “ It was the devil, 
zur ; I do know it ; I zeed his cloven foot.” 1 
One bright October morning in 1890 I was lying on the upper slopes of Corrie 
Guisachan, Black Mount, with John M‘Leish. We had been watching for nearly two hours 
the two master stags of the beat facing each other, each with his harem of some sixty or 
1 “ Cinqfoil,” writing to the Field ., 3rd October 1896, gives some extremely interesting notes on stag cunning which he 
witnessed a few days previously when out with his Devon and Somerset staghounds. After describing the finding of two good 
stags he says : “As they slowly sauntered up a sheep track on the far side, they became aware of a horseman just above them. 
They stopped, looked round, gave two bounds in the air, and instantly disappeared. A couple of tufters were now running 
merrily on the line up the sheep track ; they overran it, but, not having a crowd of horses thundering along behind them, stopped 
instantly and cast up the hill, but could make nothing of it. It was very pretty to watch them as they circled twice round the 
little patch of furze bushes and withered fern not 50 yards wide. Then they plunged in and began questing under each bush 
and tuft. For some moments they could make nothing of it, till one hound stopped suddenly and stood a moment almost like a 
pointer, and then dashed forward, when up jumped a stag close before him and went away over the brow of the hill. The other 
hound was still busy round and round a patch of thorns, and at last he forced out the other stag, who quickly followed his comrade. 
It was as good an example of how close a deer can lie, even in so scanty a covert as withered fern and straggling gorse. It, 
indeed, seemed to justify the assertion made in old books that, when crouched, a stag can in some way control his scent by 
holding his breath. Be that as it may, here, on a good scenting morning, were two stags lying within a few feet of hounds, 
and they were some appreciable time in winding them. I have often heard it asserted that wild animals choose the colour of 
the ground to match their own coats when lying close, and remember to have read a denial of that habit in an article, I think, 
in the Badminton Magazine lately. I will not venture to enter into such a discussion, but here it was worth observing that 
the two stags varied greatly in colour—one was a bright red tawny colour, the other quite a dusky brown, probably with mud 
from a soiling pit, and that the bright-coloured deer couched in the withered fern, which was an exact match, while the darker 
stag lay down among some stunted thorn bushes. I draw no inference ; I only give the fact for what it is worth. 
H 
