FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY MRS. SMITHSON
]
[Illustration:
A TYPICAL NEW ZEALAND ROYAL HEAD
]
Deer forests vary in value even more than they do in rentals. Many of
them are let from year to year with “limits” of stags set by agreement.
When, as often happens, these limits are so high that the forests cannot
produce as many good deer, the yearly tenants possibly shoot bad stags,
and make up their number in this way. These bad stags are mostly young
beasts which ought to come in for the rifle of some future tenant. So
are prospects ruined by the “limits” that ought to improve them. Forests
of this character are well known, and only find tenants amongst the
uninitiated, who are too proud or too busy to ask for information.
On the other hand, where forests are let on lease or kept in the hands
of proprietors, a totally opposite system of “nursing” sometimes goes
farther than sporting sentiment approves. At one time, deer wire was
much resorted to in order to keep the fat winter-fed stags at home. But
a park stag has no sporting value, and so the wire has to a great extent
been abandoned. But feeding by hand is increasing. The fact is that
there are more deer than the forests will support both in winter and
summer, and deer that are fed get as tame as calves in the winter. In
the autumn the shooter will not be able to detect this result of hand
feeding, but he is very likely to hear of it, or even to see pictures
taken of the wild deer herd playing in the presence of the camera. This
is calculated to lower the values of deer forests, as the idea of the
red deer’s wildness is reduced.
Much more might be done than has been attempted by introducing fresh
blood from the Caucasus, where the stags are as big as wapiti, and in
the Carpathians cross freely with the Western sort to be found in
Scotland. The two varieties meet naturally in the Carpathian Mountains.
The wapiti second crosses are not considered successful. They are wapiti
without the size, and red deer without the antlers. But some of the
first crosses have been fine beasts. Crossing is rather out of favour in
Scotland, because park deer were used for the purpose, and park deer are
supposed to introduce domestic habits and appearance. But in the wild
high altitudes of the Caucasus is a race of deer as wild, as hardy, and
twice as big as those of Scotland, and also they have splendid heads,
out of all proportion more massive than the Scotch stags’ heads.
His Majesty the King prefers deer driving to stalking. Deer stalking is
a young man’s sport, except where the hills and hill paths enable deer
ponies to go almost anywhere. But stalking, and not driving, is the
sport of the Highlands, probably as much because driving deer is helping
one’s neighbours as for any other reason. The paintings of deer drives
that one still sees many engravings of are for the most part fancy
affairs. Deer generally move slowly, and not like race-horses. In going
through a pass they usually travel at a pace they intend to keep up for
five or ten miles. They may rush sometimes, but the author believes that
this artistic idea had its origin in the time of the deerhound. The
Scotch manner of finding deer is by “spying” with the telescope. The
Continental manner is by listening for the “roar,” or love challenge, of
the stags in the deep woodlands where “spying” would be impossible.
Consequently, the woodland deer of the Continent is shot in the rutting
season, unless he is driven. In Scotland, leases make the season
terminate by the end of the first or second week in October.
The sight of deer is remarkably sharp, but they trust much more to their
olfactory powers for protection, and they generally take a couch where
their eyes protect them from the down-wind enemy and their noses from
the up-wind approach of a foe. Then they prefer to travel up wind. A
novice may succeed as well as an old hand if he can shoot and judge
distances, because as a novice he will never try to stalk a stag for
himself. That higher sportsmanship is to be learnt with years, but at
the beginning the professional stalker is as necessary as the rifle
itself. To protect him, it has been said that the deer trusts most of
all to his sense of smell, next to that of sight, and lastly to that of
hearing. Probably at the same stalk it is not very uncommon to observe
both sight and hearing mislead the stag into danger, and smell to put
him right. The author has fired at and missed a stag, which started away
from the sound, saw the splash of the bullet beyond him, and, trusting
his sight before his hearing, rushed back towards the shooter; then he
has got the scent of the latter, and thus known all about the situation
in an instant. The echo may often confuse stags, and so make them
mistrust their own sense of hearing. They will often apparently gaze at
a man in full view of them and appear not to see him unless he moves.
The very slightest movement is enough. But although the wind in the
corries often plays curious tricks in warning a stag that is apparently
safely up wind of the stalker, it is doubtful whether it ever plays
tricks against the stag and sends him back into the arms of the stalker,
as a splash from a ball in the water does sometimes.
[Illustration:
TYPICAL STAG OF TEN POINTS, SHOT IN KASHMIR BY COL. SMITHSON
]
[Illustration:
A STAG OF THIRTEEN POINTS, SHOT IN KASHMIR BY MRS. SMITHSON
]
It may be remarked that since the Government have cut down the .303 to
25 inches, instead of its previous 30 inches, it makes a very fair
stalking rifle, although it is no longer the arm of precision it was at
long range. In order to maintain the velocity, they have been obliged to
cause more pressure in the chamber by altering the shape of the “lead,”
or leading passage for the bullet, from the chamber to the bore of the
rifling. If, however, they have been able to do this by this means, what
could they not have done by applying the same improvement to the long
barrel! Only in the last year before its condemnation, the latter had
been discovered to be the best barrel in the world when properly loaded.
But it required a bigger charge than the Government ever gave to it.
Messrs. Kynoch claim a great improvement for this rifle by the discovery
of their axite powder, and with all these improvements there seems now
to be no reason why the sportsman in ordering new rifles should be
satisfied with any less flat trajectory than that given by the
Mannlicher with its initial 2350 foot-seconds velocity. The author will
not discuss trajectories in this work, because he has reason to question
the accuracy of the text-books, including the last issued by the
Government; and it would be clearly unwise to challenge criticism here,
without having the space to enter fully into the matter.