Field Notes and Stalking Yarns 67 
In the great deer forest country stretching from Beauly to the west coast Mr. Winans 
is probably responsible for the fact that the animals have increased threefold during his 
tenancy. In Mar, Athole, and Black Mount deer are still on the increase, whilst to the 
north_in Wyvis, Inchbae, Strathvaick, Braemore, Kinloch-Luichart, Fannich, Dundonnell, 
and Letterewe—there is an immense stock of deer, which are every year degenerating. In 
Strathvaick there are probably more deer to the acre than in any other forest in Scotland, 
and Mr. Williams annually shoots about 115 stags. Whilst on the way to Dundonnell forest 
in 1891 I drove along the road from Garve which runs parallel to the long hill of Strathvaick, 
and there I saw the largest assemblage of wild deer that has ever come under my eye. One 
of Mr. Williams’s stalkers, with whom I got into conversation at Aultguish Inn, estimated 
the number then within sight at 1700, and as I drove on towards the Braemore march I 
saw some 400 or 500 more that were probably out of his view. The formation of these 
great herds has one serious drawback to the tenant : it causes the best stags, from the 
stalker’s point of view, to desert the district and move to isolated situations on the sheep 
grounds or in the big woods, where their natural cunning stands them in good stead. 
From 1889 to 1894 Mr. Winans’s princely domain in the North remained undis¬ 
turbed by the sound of a rifle, and amongst Northern sportsmen speculation was rife 
as to the number of noble harts that must have reached their prime and be wandering 
unscathed through his various forests. At Fort George in Inverness-shire, where I was 
then quartered, one heard all the local gossip about these forests, and the wild 
speculation as to the sport to be had there. “ Great heavens ! what grand heads I 
could get had I this or that forest just for one year,” was the exclamation of many 
a keen stalker, and when in 1893 a large piece in the very heart of Mr. Winans’s 
country became vacant, competition for it was simply fierce. In the end it fell to a certain 
Mr. L., a keen sportsman, a first-class shot, and a man who knows a good head when he 
sees it. Poor fellow, he hoped to fill his walls in that one season with trophies such as 
few could boast, but, alas ! his first day’s stalking dashed these hopes to the ground. 
There were stags enough and to spare, and plenty of big ones among them, but all so 
abominably tame that they never moved even when he showed himself within 150 yards 
of them ; and as to their heads, not a single good one was to be seen. A second day proved 
just as bad as the first. By the end of it he had been all over the ground, and having 
satisfied himself that there was not a good head in the forest, he quickly shot his number 
and left the place in disgust. 
Kintail is an example of a forest which, according to the prevailing wind, is at times full 
of deer, and at other times may not yield a single good head in a whole season. At any 
time, as its home stock is comparatively small, but few stags find their way there from 
other forests, but those that do come are generally first-rate animals. For some years 
previous to 1894 very little was done at Kintail, but in that good season many big stags 
selected it as their summer ground. It was then in the hands of one of the best 
stalkers and shots of this country — Sir Edmund Loder — and during the season he won 
to his own rifle perhaps the finest lot of heads that has fallen to any one man during 
the past ten years. Nearly all of these fine stags were found singly, or with only one or two 
companions. The best head, a magnificent io-pointer, which adorns the smoking-room at 
k 2 
