The kind of rifle best suited for red deer in Scotland is a double .303, .256, or .275. These weapons with a hollow-fronted or a soft-nosed bullet can be made to expend all the impact energy within the body of a deer, whereas if hard the bullets would pierce a stag from end to end and possibly do him no immediate damage. Magazine single rifles would be almost as effective if they were not noisy in loading, and single loaders are slow, but almost as extremely moderate in price as the latter. The sporting range for a stag before the express rifles was from 40 to 100 yards. The express increased the range at which a true sportsman would risk a shot up to 150 yards, and the high velocity rifles named above are doubtless as deadly at 250 yards as the Henry rifle was at 100 yards. The flat trajectory of a rifle giving an initial velocity of from 2000 to 2400 feet per second is of even more importance than the latter’s greater energy of impact, for deer are very easily killed if hit in the chest cavity by an expanding bullet, as those are which are soft-nosed or hollow-pointed. The latter is much the better principle for deer, because expansion is then caused as much by striking the soft flesh or the skin as it is by striking a bone. The cause of the expansion in the latter case is hydraulic pressure, increased with the velocity of the bullet, through the 87 per cent. of water of the deer’s flesh.

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.

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.