208 
British Deer and their Horns 
lying within a few yards of the spot where I fired at him. Accompanying the letter were 
Old Queer Head’s skull and horns, which present a curious malformation. One pedicle has 
been jammed down backwards and inwards, so that the two horns follow one another on the 
head, like the hands of a vulgar little boy in the act of “ cocking a snook.” It was entirely 
emblematic of his career. 
This little yarn is intended to show that a roe is not always an easy creature to circum¬ 
vent even when he does inhabit a limited area ; and in the many enjoyable days roe-stalking 
that have fallen to my lot I can recall plenty of instances when the roe has afforded every 
bit as good sport as the stag. One day at Eskadale Hugh Ross and I had a somewhat curious 
experience. We had toiled all day, from daybreak till dusk, and were in the evening about 
to turn uphill to the cottage, when there, right in the middle of the public highroad, the 
last place one would of course have expected to see him, stood a buck. Just as I fired he 
moved, and the bullet merely cut the skin under the brisket. It gave him such a fright, 
however, that instead of turning back into the wood, he sprang forward and cleared a high 
wall which led downhill to open fields skirting the Beauly. After running for some time I 
expected every second he would stand and offer me another chance ; but no, on he ran till he 
reached the swollen river, into which he plunged without a moment’s hesitation. I was not 
so very far behind, and as he reached the middle of the river, fired at his head—result, a miss 
just over the top. Then another shot, and the head fell to one side and drifted down the 
stream. Though our buck was now dead, the fun had only just begun, for not 800 yards 
below were the rushing rapids, where no one but a fool would go even in the stout coble 
lying upside down on the shingle close by. Never on this earth was there such a boat to 
move as that, and we saw the buck come drifting by as Ross and myself toiled and sweated 
to move the wretched thing from the weeds that had grown around it. At last it was 
launched and the roe recovered from the river just as we were entering the Ailean Aigas 
rapids. 
ROE HEADS 
A good stag’s head, even nowadays, is not by any means rare ; but a first-class roebuck’s 
head is, and I believe always has been, quite a rarity. 
In a season s shooting one sees many fine examples of the former, although they may 
not always measure well, but it is quite an exceptional year when more than three or four 
first-class roebucks’ heads pass into the hands of the stuffers. 
At the beginning of the last chapter I mentioned how very unusual it was to find horns 
of the roe of Pleistocene times which were in any degree better than those of to-day, and I 
give a photograph of the only two which have come under my notice. Only since the year 
1892 has there been any marked deterioration in the horns of Scottish roe, and this only 
applies to the greater part of the country north of Inverness, for in other parts there is 
no perceptible difference. 1 With regard to roe heads the usual talk about deterioration does 
1 In 1895 Mr. Lucas Tooth kindly gave me a day at Beaufort. On the open roe ground of Kiltarlity, working hard all day, 
from daylight till dark, I only saw two very poor bucks with wretched heads. In 1890 I once saw no less than seven good 
bucks in an evening on this same ground. 
