January, 1918 
FOREST AND STREAM 
19 
I N those times the antlers of the stag were 
on the walls of every castle, and the hunt¬ 
ing of the stag was great concern. Fox 
hunting later was much developed in Eng¬ 
land, but at the time of the writing of our 
old book it was a matter of far less im¬ 
portance than the chase of the hart. Gas¬ 
ton speaks of hunting the hart "by strength” 
—that is to say, by horse and hound, by bow 
or spear. Quite an art it was too, in that 
day as in this; and singularly a very strong 
resemblance still remains in our hunting of 
the wild deer to the ancient hart hunting in 
France or England. 
They kept their trophies generation after 
generation in those old countries—they 
were a part of the realty as much as the 
family portraits. Perhaps you have been in 
Warwick Castle in England, in the great 
dining room, and have seen the tremendous 
antlers of the extinct Irish elk—far larger 
than the greatest moose antlers you ever 
saw—dug up from the peat bogs of Ireland 
and preserved here on the walls of this 
ancient English castle. The sergeant who 
shows you around will smile as he says, 
“These are the oldest things we have in the 
castle—in fact, they are some thousands of 
years of 
age.” 
Although 
not every 
manor can 
boast an¬ 
tlers so 
old as 
these, each 
is apt to 
have its 
heads of 
stag or 
hart dat¬ 
ing back 
no one 
knows just 
how far. 
Gas ton 
Ph o e b us 
and his 
cousin 
Edward 
of York 
have told 
us about the taking of many an ancient 
trophy now perhaps crumbled in dust. We 
can see them going out at dawn, for the 
hunt of the stag, just as we ourselves do 
even now. Their pages carry to us all the 
splendid humanity and comradeship of that 
day, entirely across the ages to us now to¬ 
day—the strange, beautiful comradeship of 
sport, which no one may know who has 
never known the life of the chase itself. 
But more extraordinary than this senti¬ 
mental charm of the book is its curious 
proof of the unchanging quality of certain 
of the principles of the chase. 
For instance, you know the cusiom of 
deer hunters from Daniel Boone down as 
to the division of the carcass of a deer 
to whose taking several hunters have con¬ 
tributed. The greatest of interest and 
ownership is attached to the man who 
“drew first blood” as the phrase usually is. 
If he can prove that his bullet first struck 
the deer, even though it injured it very 
little, he is entitled to his choice in the 
division of the deer, no matter who else 
brought it down. Usually the choice in the 
olden days was that of the head and hide. 
Sometimes a hunter would prefer to take 
fired the finally fatal shot. “That is the 
custom of my jpeople,” said he, and he 
kicked the skin to me. 
I N the old times there might be many 
men engaged in a hunt of this sort, and 
of these several would be engaged in 
the partition of the venison taken in the 
hunt. Thus, the book says: 
“And of the fees it is to be known that 
the man whoever he be, who has smitten 
a deer while posted at his tree with a 
death-stroke so that the deer be got before 
the sun goes down, he shall have the skin. 
And if he be not posted or has gone from 
his tree, or has done otherwise than is 
said, he shall have none. And as of the 
fewterers (hound leaders), if they be 
posted, the first teaser and receiver that 
draweth the deer down shall divide the 
skin. Nevertheless in other lord’s hunting 
whoso pincheth first and goeth therewith 
to the death he shall have the skin. And 
all the deer’s necks are the hunters, and 
one shoulder and the chine is his that un- 
doeth the deer, and the other shoulder is 
the forester’s or the parker’s fee that keep- 
eth the bailie that is hunted. And all 
the skins 
of harts 
1 slain with 
s t r e n gth 
1 of hart- 
j hounds, 
I belong to 
j the master 
| o f the 
h a r t - 
hounds 
as his fee.” 
Now, 
any deer 
hunter 
will see in 
the fore¬ 
going the 
p o s s i ble 
original of 
c e r t a in 
customs of 
the chase 
J o b t aining 
in parts of 
our country at this or earlier times. It 
was sometimes ruled that a deer not killed 
during the first day and jumped by a fresh 
hunter on the next day did not carry any 
original title over night, and the new 
hunter had him all for his own, in spite of 
an earlier wound. Also it was customary 
that a good share of the deer should go 
to the man owning the hounds which drove 
it, if the chase was with hounds. 
Our book goes on to tell us also that in 
the royal hunts, where all the game was 
laid out on the grass for inspection of the 
nobleman, the church had its share, the 
poor had their share, all the participants 
in the hunt had certain share, and even the 
dogs themselves had certain specified 
shares of the carcass which were theirs in¬ 
disputably. In fact, wild game has always 
been looked on as something which ought 
to be shared generously with one’s neigh¬ 
bors. In all hunting countries when one 
kills venison he carries venison also to his 
neighbors, even at some trouble to him¬ 
self. It is no doubt only the old custom 
come down to us, modified but still strong. 
I have had an entire stranger stop me 
(continued on page 50) 
__i_ Jk . _---- 
head. It sank, but recovered, and got into 
a thicket, where a Cree half-breed killed 
it before I could get to it. When we came 
to skin the bear he saw the mark of my 
bullet, and laughing spread out his hands. 
“Yours,” he said, although he himself had 
the hind quarters. The rest of the deer 
was divided invariably among sportsmen 
on certain rules of equity, to violate which 
would have been an impossible and un¬ 
pardonable thing. There never was much 
argument about the division of the deer. 
This sort of thing exists also among sav¬ 
ages. I once at long range shot a swim¬ 
ming bear just through the top of the 
