Red Deer 5 1 
hundred times without dreaming that so large a creature could possibly be concealed 
there. 
The cunning of an old stag is perhaps most manifest during the period when his horns 
are growing. The animals seem to know that at this season they are safe from molestation, 
for in selecting a summer lair they will frequently fix upon a place in close proximity to 
the haunts of men, and there they will make their home until the end of the close 
season, when away they go in search of “ fresh fields and pastures new.” Often enough 
their haunt will be found in a small wood or spinney near the stalker’s house, an instance 
of which is fresh in my memory. For several seasons a little fir wood about too yards 
square, and barely 200 yards from the stalker’s house at Kiltarlity, was frequented by a very 
big stag that always changed its quarters for Boblainey Wood as soon as its horns were 
A SOILING POOL 
clean. Johnnie Ross (the stalker) often spoke to me of this cunning old fellow who had 
so long eluded the wiles of his pursuers, and one evening, returning from roe-stalking, we 
saw him approach the covert. At first, when a considerable distance away, he moved with 
slow and stealthy steps, looking carefully around to see that the coast was clear, but as he 
drew near he suddenly dashed down the hill at full speed and entered the wood. Ross 
said that at daybreak he always left the covert in the same manner, these big stags evidently 
fancying that their resting-places will not be marked if they appear to rush past them. 
A big Eskadale stag, with whom I had something more than a bowing acquaintance, 
was particularly cute in his selection of a summer home. He chose the lovely island in 
the Beauly known as Ailean Aigas, and Miss Dove, who has tenanted the house for some 
years, told me he came there regularly for four seasons, always leaving on the ist of August. 
The river rushes wildly past this exquisite little rock island, which is not many hundred 
yards round, and the stag used to swim across every morning at daybreak to feed in the 
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