I 9° British Deer and their Horns 
vanished had not the generations of owners taken every care to preserve the numbers of the 
deer and their favourite resort. 
The sight of roe is very keen, and where they are accustomed to be alarmed they will 
detect danger quicker than a stag, especially if there is the smallest movement on the part of 
the enemy ; but their hearing is probably about the same as a stag’s. After a roe has been 
once alarmed he is not nearly of such a suspicious character as a red deer, who will often 
not settle down all day after being disturbed, whereas a roe will get over his fears in a short 
time, and perhaps may even be seen feeding on the same spot again in an hour or less. 
They are also full of inquisitiveness, and will try from every point of view the spot where 
you he concealed, and where they imagine they have seen something, till a puff of wind 
from your direction verifies their suspicions. 
Does and young bucks are seldom endowed with much cunning, but an old fellow 
USUAL ATTITUDE TO ESCAPE BY HIDING 
whose life has been frequently sought knows all the tricks of the trade and several more. 
If you want to shoot a good buck in a wood that you know he frequents, you will have a 
much better chance if you go with the beaters and keep along the side of the bushes where 
he generally lies up and breaks back. So well known is this habit of theirs of breaking 
back, that in one of the beats at Cawdor the guns are placed and the beaters work straight 
away from them. There was one particular buck at Murthly that escaped us for three years 
in the big wood. I found he always made for some thick whins in the middle of the beat, 
so there I placed myself one day by way of experiment, intending to join the line as it came 
on. The beaters were close to me, when out of the corner of my eye I saw the buck’s back 
as he came up to my ambush and lay down within ten yards of me. Knowing he could 
scarcely escape, I watched with interest the way he kept moving his head from side to side 
and working his ears, as if calculating from which side of the bushes the beaters were coming. 
But fearing he would rush into the line of one of them when they came close, I was obliged 
to assassinate him on the spot. 
