Stags’ Heads 123 
those days, and columns of print have been written, and will continue to be written, about 
how we may improve our deer ; the joke of it all is that every scientist, practical stalker, and 
naturalist knows how it may be done, but also knows that the self-interest of man will not 
allow any such thing to take place. If proper measures were taken to ensure a return of the 
vanished monarchs, deer-stalking could then only be indulged in by one or two people, and 
that would never do. Everybody nowadays wants to have the very largest deer and the 
greatest possible quantity of them for himself and his friends to shoot; and to cap all comes 
the fatal yearly tenant system, for a sportsman paying a big rent very naturally skins the 
place and spoils the forest as regards the heads. Perhaps, though, things are best, after all, 
as they are, for the two main objects of Highland deer-stalking are, first, the grand sport 
and manly recreation it affords to the well-to-do classes in Great Britain ; and, secondly, 
the congenial employment it gives to the people of the soil. Without a very great stock 
of deer such a condition of things could not exist. Heads must therefore be only a 
minor consideration ; but all should remember that, as the conditions of wild-deer life have 
altered so vastly within the past thirty years, it is a most suicidal and absolutely cruel 
policy to maintain a large stock without very generous winter feeding. If every proprietor 
were to feed his deer in winter as lavishly as a certain tenant in the west of Scotland does, 
and were to plant woods in his barren glens, we should not hear half so much about the 
deterioration of heads, nor would any sportsman find that the stags were one whit easier to 
shoot when the stalking season arrived. 
We have in the red deer of New Zealand a splendid example of the manner in which 
the animals may be improved in a very short time by the conditions which are most essential to 
body and horn growth. They were only introduced into the North Island so late as 1850, 
when some were turned out on the Nelson Hills. These were augmented shortly afterwards 
by others sent by command of H.R.H. the Prince Consort. Almost immediately the animals 
increased and multiplied, but owing to the damage they did to cultivation, they were driven 
back into a wild mountainous country about half the size of Scotland. 
The deer are now fairly numerous near the Maungaraki range, Wairarapa, and Cromwell 
districts. Stags run to as much as 28 stone clean, and after six years of age carry heads of 
great size, of which the 18-pointer from Wairarapa owned by Mr. J. Handyside is a good 
example. 
My uncle, Mr. Melville Gray of Timaru, who has spent his life in New Zealand, 
stalks these wild deer annually in the Cromwell district, and gives a capital account of the 
sport. The stalking is apparently of a far more arduous nature than that of our Highlands, 
for the shooter, after he has spied his deer, has sometimes to make a climb of several 
thousand feet before he can get above them. Even then the ground above the scrub, to 
which the deer resort in the rutting season, is covered with loose stones, which are set in 
motion very easily and spoil many a stalk. Two good heads in a fortnight’s stalking are 
considered a fair result on the higher ranges ; most of the deer, however, are killed by still¬ 
hunting in the scrub. 
The case of the wild Scotch stags which lived from the beginning of this century till 
1840 is almost parallel to that of the deer existing in New Zealand to-day. They had a 
really good range, splendid browsing and grazing, and few other deer to interfere with them ; 
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