54 
British Deer and their Horns 
came to an untimely end. At Black Mount alone some fifty stags were found lying dead by 
the side of Loch Tulla. 
The shyness of deer is proverbial, and yet, like other animals, they learn in time that 
novelties are not necessarily enemies in disguise. The driver of a donkey engine on the 
West Highland line, when that railway was being constructed through the Rannoch district, 
told me some interesting facts as to the way in which they gradually got accustomed to the 
trains. At first they would move clear away off the sky-line when the engine was at work, 
so great was their horror of the noise and steam. In time, however, the deer would even 
feed within sight, though never descending to the flats till nightfall. As months went by 
they gradually began to accept the trains as inevitable horrors, which, however, never moved 
off a certain track, and at last they ventured to cross under the line by means of the culverts. 
Now, I am told, deer are constantly seen on the Rannoch and Black Mount flats, feeding 
within ioo yards of the line, and merely raising their heads as the engine goes puffing by. 
Of deep sleep—that “ gentle thing beloved from pole to pole ”—deer seem to have little 
or no experience. Rarely indeed are they found fast asleep ; but James M‘Cook, stalker at 
Ben Alder, once actually caught hold of a hind in that condition. 
As to length of life there is some difference of opinion, but, malgre numerous old 
Highland adages implying that deer and eagles live for ever, most foresters of experience are 
now agreed that from twenty to thirty years is the limit of a stag’s life, whilst eighteen years 
are about as much as a park stag ever attains to. Stags in parks commonly begin to 
deteriorate at thirteen years, and in many cases show signs of age, such as rotten horn tops and 
weak brows, as early as twelve. Wild deer, however, doubtless owing to their greater 
hardihood, facilities for exercise, and more frugal living, seldom show any falling-off in horn 
or body till over fourteen or fifteen years. Their age limit may be reckoned as much the 
same as that of the horse. In 1863 some twenty deer were brought over from Arisaig by 
S. Ross, the present keeper at Ardnamurchan, and, after being marked, were let loose in that 
forest; and in 1881 Mr. A. Burn Murdoch, while shooting there, killed a very old stag 
with one horn, which proved to be one of the animals so turned down, and therefore at 
least twenty-nine years old. On the other hand, I have seen a park stag bearing all the 
marks of age, such as poor quarters, rotten tops, insignificant brows, and decayed teeth, at 
fourteen years of age. Twenty years is the greatest age I have known a park hind live to, and 
the animal in question was only skin and bone, as all her teeth were done for. 
An interesting note with regard to the age of a hind is furnished in Mr. Henry 
Evans’s excellent notes on the wild deer of Jura. He says— 
One of these hinds had very peculiar ears. She was rather tame, and was seen constantly. Twenty- 
two years ago she was a large hind with a good calf at her side. In November 1889 she broke her neck by 
falling down some rocks. She was then looking ragged and feeble, but had a calf at her side. She reared 
twenty calves during the period of twenty-one years’ observation, has gone geld (or lost her calf) only 
once during that long period, viz. the year before her death. She must have been no less than five years 
old when first observed, for she was then a large hind with a good calf at her side. Consequently we 
cannot set her down at less than twenty-six at her death. Her last calf died. This hind had a complete 
set of teeth. 
We know now that horns offer no signs by which we can determine age. Certainly 
