Fishing -- Scotland; Hunting -- Scotland; Salmon fishing -- Great Britain; Spanish American literature -- History and criticism
“I remember,” he says, “wounding a Royal Stag some years ago at
Loch Luichart--I broke his fore leg at the shoulder. Having no dog
with me I never succeeded in getting up to him to finish him before
dark, and so lost him. The wound was not mortal--it had shattered
the bone; he recovered and lived for several years after, but
he always had a stiff joint. The first year he never shed his
velvet and dropped a point from his royal head; the second year
he cleaned, but never regained his royal head or even a good one
again.”
[Illustration: IN ACHNASHELLACH FOREST.
By FINLAY MACKINNON.]
In Speedy’s _Natural History of Sport in Scotland with Rod and Gun_
there is an interesting account of a thirteen-pointer whose hind
leg was broken above the hock. In the forest in Inverness-shire
where this stag was, the deer were regularly fed during the
winter. “When feeding commenced he came regularly as before; but
in consequence of his wound he was reduced to a skeleton, and,
being very weak, was kept off by the other stags. He used to hide,
however, not far off, and when the others took their departure he
returned to the feeding-place, when the keeper attended to him and
had opportunities, with the aid of his glass, of noting the injured
limb at a comparatively short distance. Within a month after
feeding commenced, he was able to use it, and in three months was
master of the herd.... As the new antlers grew it was found that
the one on the opposite side from the broken limb was minus the
brow-point.” He was shot in that season, and scaled 17 st. 12 lb.
clean, being then nine years old.
I myself had a personal experience which is perhaps worth recording
in this connection. I was stalking late in the season--indeed it
was the last day that I was out--and we had been unable to get
a shot until late in the evening, when I killed a good stag. We
had some miles to go before we reached the end of the road in the
forest where the motor-car from the lodge was to meet us, and the
light was beginning to fail. We were high up on the side of a
corrie, and were preparing to start on our homeward journey, when
Sandy, the stalker, suddenly turned to me and said, pulling out his
glass, “I see some deer down there on the flat.”
In a moment he had his glass on them, and said: “Would you be
liking another stag? There’s a fine stag with hinds, and we shall
not be long getting down to them. It’s been poor sport to-day.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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