“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.”
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.”