hinds pushed the stag and he went off, unhurt as far as I could judge. I could never make out whether the action of my host and his forester was due to jealousy or carelessness. They might have wished to keep such a fine head for themselves, or they may not have realised that the hinds could see them if the stag could not. I think, however, that though Austrian foresters are, from long practice in steep and difficult ground, much better at chamois stalking than most Englishmen, they are not nearly so good at crawling or at approaching deer in easy ground as the average Scotch deer stalker, and are nothing like so clever in the use of a telescope as our men usually are.
I had now had five days of excellent sport in this forest, and had killed five stags, besides missing two; and I might easily have killed as many more. On the last day we had a long walk back to my host’s house, and after spending the morning in vainly trying to get a very restless stag which would not stop long enough in one place to be stalked, we were going along a path on a steep hillside with open ground above us. Coming round a corner I saw a good stag standing alone at a distance which I guessed at 350 yards, and very high above me. He stood and watched us, and though I have never been in the habit of trying such long shots as this, I thought I might take a last chance.
I had often found that my Lee Metford carried high when shooting downhill, and I had missed several chamois standing below me. Though I had asked my son, who at the time was musketry instructor of his battalion of the Scots Guards, what was the proper allowance to make when firing at steep angles up or down hill, he said there was nothing known about it in the army as their musketry practice was always on the level; and the lesson of Majuba Mill did not seem to have opened the eyes of the musketry instructors at that date. Sir Edmund Loder was the only man who seemed to have worked out the question for himself, and he advised me to aim very low when firing downhill with a Lee Metford fitted with sporting sights as mine was.
In this case I put up the highest sight, marked 300 yards, and took it very full, firing from the shoulder without a rest. The stag gave a start and stood still without shifting his position broadside on to me. I fired a second and then a third shot, without any visible effect. At the fourth shot the stag dropped dead. When we got up to him, which took a long time, I found that one shot, which I suppose to have been the first, had passed through the shoulder; and another, I suppose the last, through the heart. My companions were much surprised at the distance, which they estimated at 400 to 500 yards, and I went away with a reputation which I certainly did not deserve. For though, with modern telescopic sights properly fitted to a Mauser or Mannlicher rifle, a first-class shot may fire at such distances with a good chance of killing, I have always looked on about 150 yards as my farthest safe distance, and have missed many shots, especially when lying down, even at that range.
This ended the best week’s sport I ever had, and one that I would not have changed for treble as long in the best forest in Scotland. But I must again warn English sportsmen of the many difficulties that the leasing of Alpine preserves by foreign sportsmen entails, even if they speak
