December saying that, as the deer were doing harm, we must hold a battue or the local governor would order one, as he had the right to do. This meant going out in the dead of winter and paying a lot of drivers for very little result; or allowing the inhabitants to do their worst on the deer without regard to age or sex. Then there were poachers from Bavaria —or at least the Bavarians got the credit of it—who were said to be quite ready to use their rifle on man as well as on chamois or deer, if disturbed or challenged by keepers. I expect there was a woman in the affair when poor Willi had his brains blown out, after we gave up the lease, perhaps by one of these poachers. The murderer was never discovered or con¬ victed, and the keeper’s body might not have been found if his dog had not gnawed his leash and led the searchers to where he lay dead. This dog was the best dachshund after roe or deer that I ever saw. I remember once, when we had unsuccessfully driven a thick rocky wood on the banks of the river, Willi slipped the dog, who found a stag, followed him across a torrent fifteen yards wide, up the opposite hillside till the stag was out of sight, and three hours afterwards followed him back over the river again and into some cliffs which we had beaten for chamois, and which were too steep for the dog to climb.
It was very pretty sport to go and seat yourself on a still day in a favourite “Weehsel," or roe path, between two of the patches of forest which filled all the hollows on the lower part of our ground, and let the dachshund find a roebuck, which would run round and round, stopping to listen to the dog baying on his track, and generally giving one a shot if you knew best where to cut him off.
Roe were fairly numerous and gave a great deal more sport than they do in Scotland, in their rutting season, July and August. The method adopted was to go out at daylight and walk quietly about in places which bucks were known to frequent, stopping at intervals to imitate the call of the doe. This, called “ Blatten ” in German, is done by blowing on a blade of grass held in the hands in a peculiar way. The love-sick buck, hearing this sound, which is not heard very far off and only when the weather is calm, runs quickly to the place and shows himself for a moment, but long enough to get in a shot with a rifle if you are quick. My successor on this shoot, Baron von Lerchenfeld, once killed seven bucks in a single morning in this manner; but it is no use staying out after seven or eight o’clock, and the meat is not so good then as in early winter, when it is first-rate if cooked in German fashion.
We often found roe as high up as the chamois when drawing the woods, or rather we found chamois as low down as the roe. For some of the best chamois bucks on the ground frequented the steep rocky woods both in summer and winter, in preference to the higher pastures, which were mostly fed by cattle during the summer months. There were two old bucks in particular, which had long defeated the wiles of the best stalkers in the district, and which I had spied more than once in positions where they could be neither stalked nor driven.
We had a drive one day in which the lowest post fell to my lot, at the foot of a partly wooded rocky hillside, under a big sycamore tree. We expected to find roe and perhaps a stag, but I had little hope of a chamois,
