CHAPTER IV 
FIELD NOTES AND STALKING YARNS 
It is generally agreed amongst those of us who are devoted to sport with the rifle that the 
greatest pleasure of the modern chase is that of stalking a really wild animal that has been 
previously spied in an open, rugged, and mountainous country, with all its attendant incidents 
and varying chances of failure or success. This sport in its highest form is only to be 
had with the various wild goats and sheep of Europe, Asia, and America, and as these 
highly sensitive creatures are gifted with powers of sight and hearing far superior to those 
of the stag, he who means to succeed with them must be prepared for long and toilsome 
journeys, and a perseverance in pursuit equal at least to that of Sherlock Holmes. If he is 
not so armed, let him content himself at home, as he well may do if privileged to pursue the 
stag in any of our wild Northern forests. “ Oh, but,” says Mr. Superfine Sciolist, “ who 
would care to shoot poor beasts mewed up within an enclosure of seven-strand wire fencing ? ” 
A sneer of the ignorant, but it is never heard from men who know what deer-stalking really 
is in any of the wide and ample ranges of Scotland. There the deer have fair play, for no 
lasting popularity could ever attach to any sport in this country where such is not practised, 
and sometimes happy is the man who can point to even one dead animal as the result of a 
week’s hard stalking. He need not be ashamed of his work, however skilled he may be in 
the stalker’s art. On the other hand, a well-known Russian sportsman with whom I was 
dining recently had just come from the North, where he had rented one of those small sheep- 
pen forests in Inverness-shire, and he was immensely disgusted with the ease and luxury of 
sport “ as made in Scotland,” accustomed as he was to the pursuit of big game, with its 
comparatively few chances. “ Ah ! ” said he, with scornful emphasis, “ it is absurd ; it is 
slaughter. Why, you get three shots every day ! ” 
I think it says a good deal for the genuineness and healthy tone of Scotch deer¬ 
stalking that no professionalism has, or ever can, pervade the sport. If we look into the 
annals of the past, we shall see how, instead of its degenerating or becoming less manly, it is 
conducted to-day on infinitely more sportsmanlike lines than at any previous period. 
Three hundred years ago great drives were the fashion ; the animals, confined within a small 
space, were brought within easy reach and practically butchered at a short range, a form of 
amusement for which even the poverty of the weapons of that day was hardly a sufficient 
